LONDON, July 15 (Xinhua) -- British soldiers serving in Iraq are being killed at a proportionally greater rate than their American counterparts for the first time since the start of the war, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

    As attacks surged in Basra, southern Iraq, the death rate of British troops has now surpassed that of Americans, marking a "watershed" for British involvement in the conflict, which in turn leads to calls for the government to set an immediate timetable for withdrawal from the war-torn country, said the report.

    It cited an analysis by Professor Sheila Bird, vice-president of the Royal Statistical Society, on British and American fatalities from May 2006 to June 2007.

    Britain has 5,500 troops serving in Iraq, and suffered 23 fatalities between February 5 and June 24, whereas the United States has 165,000, and lost 463 over the same period, according Bird's analysis.

    The newspaper quoted a very senior commander from the army as saying that the war in Iraq was now regarded by political and military chiefs within the Ministry of Defense as "a lost cause".

    The commander urged that both Britain and America to accept they were facing the possibility of "strategic failure" in Iraq.

    A think tank on Iraq suggest Britain should cease "offensive military operations" in Iraq and concentrate on training Iraqi security forces.

    But a Ministry of Defense spokesman dismissed the comparison report as "too simplistic to try to extrapolate meaningful conclusions for the future."