A British (L) soldier escorts a wounded colleague to a waiting British helicopter near the scene of a roadside bomb attack near Basra in southern Iraq, Sept. 4, 2006.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery >>>

    LONDON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Britain should withdraw its troops from Iraq as their continued presence only exacerbates the country's security problems, Britain's top army commander said in an interview published on Friday.

    In an interview for Friday's edition of the Daily Mail newspaper, published on its website, General Sir Richard Dannatt said Britain's Iraq venture was aggravating the security threat elsewhere in the world.

    "I don't say the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them," he said.

    Dannatt, who took over as chief of the General Staff in August, described Prime Minister Tony Blair's policies as "naive," saying that while Iraqis might have welcomed coalition forces following the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the good will has evaporated in years of constant attacks.

    "Our presence exacerbates the security problems," he said. "Whatever consent we may have had in the first place ... has largely turned to intolerance."

    Britain has 7,200 troops in southern Iraq patrolling an area around Basra, a bastion of Shiite militias. A total of 119 British troops have been killed in Iraq since the country joined the U.S.-led invasion three years ago.

    "We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear," Dannatt said. "As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren't invited certainly by those in Iraq at the time." Enditem

    WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- A team of U.S. and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in the violence across Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the highest estimate ever for the war's death toll, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

    The figure breaks down to about 15,000 violent deaths a month, a number that is quadruple the one for July given by Iraqi government hospitals and the morgue in Baghdad and published last month in a United Nations report in Iraq. Full Story

107 bullet-riddled bodies found around Baghdad

    BEIJING, Oct. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- The Iraqi police have found 107 unidentified bodies in the past two days, most of them believed to be the latest victims of sectarian violence, according to media reports Wednesday. Full Story

Violence, killings escalate in Iraq: U.N. official

    GENEVA, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Violence and killings in Iraq have escalated in the past seven to eight months, with some 100 people killed in the country every day, the United Nations top humanitarian official said here on Wednesday. Full Story

More Related Stories >>>