This article is part of a series documenting civilian deaths in Basra during British control from 2003 to 2009. Drawing on testimony, eyewitness accounts and archival records, the series examines incidents—often uninvestigated and absent from official histories—that reveal the risks of urban occupation and the lasting effects on the families involved. Britain entered Iraq in March 2003 as part of the United States-led coalition to remove Saddam Hussein. Its area of responsibility was the south, centred on Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city and a key oil hub. Geography and political calculation shaped that role: British forces could advance directly from Kuwait, and ministers believed the city’s Shia majority might be more receptive to coalition forces than Sunni areas elsewhere. About 46,000 troops took part in the invasion, with the 1st (UK) Armoured Division leading the push into Basra. Resistance was uneven—some Iraqi units surrendered, others fought short engagements before withdrawing—but the urban setting made civilian casualties more likely and harder to investigate. This report , undertaken during a trip to Iraq in June 2025, examines one such case, part of a wider effort to record the human cost of the occupation.
On 27 March 2003, British forces were advancing through the district around Abusqara Oil Street, near Karama School in Basra. The invasion was just over a week old, and the British position in the south was consolidating. According to local accounts, Iraqi army troops, still loyal to Saddam Hussein, had been stationed at the school but were not firing at the British convoy that entered the area that day.
Among the civilians present was Ali Touma Abdullah, a labourer in his early thirties. In his arms he carried his two-year-old daughter, Athraa Touma Abdullah. His brother, Kdhaer Touma Abdullah, 61, an employee of the Ministry of Basra, was nearby.
“The Iraqi army was not shooting back,” Kdhaer recalls, many years later. “My brother was walking across the street, not hiding, not attacking anyone.”
From the top of a British Humvee, Kdhaer claims that a soldier operated a mounted machine gun. Perhaps seeing a person carrying something unclear, perhaps terrified in the midst of battle, the gunner reportedly opened fire.
“It hit the girl in the back and went through to her father,” says Kdhaer. “They both died instantly.” He believes the gunner was a woman and says he saw her cry after realising what had happened. Another woman nearby was wounded in the legs from the shootings.
As with so many deaths and injuries during that time in Iraq, the description of the deaths is both relatively detailed but cannot be independently confirmed. There appears to be no British operational summary from that period that refers to the deaths of a man and child in that location on that date, and no known photographs of the death, nor forthcoming third-party witness statements exist.
In Basra at the time, journalists were largely embedded with military units and rarely present at such incidents. Civilians had limited ability to document events, and combat zones shifted quickly. The fog of war was thick: a soldier in a moving convoy could have only seconds to assess a possible threat, and the distinction between civilian and combatant could be unclear in those moments. All of this is commonplace when the dogs of wars are let slipped.
What is not disputed is that dozens of Iraqi soldiers were killed in the vicinity that day and that, at least from public records, no British personnel died on that day. Whether the shots that struck Ali and Athraa were the result of mistaken identity, a misperceived threat or a breach of rules of engagement remains unresolved. For the family, the immediate aftermath brought no path to justice.
“There was no government, no lawsuit, no capacity to complain,” says Kdhaer. With the fall of Saddam’s regime, state institutions had collapsed. Security in Basra was fragile, and travel was risky. Ali and Athraa were buried in Hartha. Six months later, when roads were safer, they were reburied in Najaf, a place widely considered amongst the holiest cities of Shia Islam and one of its spiritual capitals.
Ali’s widow was left with two daughters and a son, Hmeed Touma Abdullah, then a small boy and now in his twenties. The loss of the family’s main provider brought financial hardship.
“It affected them,” says Kdhaer. “They lost their father. They lost their future.”
He says he took on much of the responsibility for their care. Two years later, he tried to lodge a claim with an Iraqi organisation documenting civilian deaths.
“We complained, but no one accepted it,” he says. “No one from the British military ever came.” He believes the lack of follow-up was not only a result of the chaotic early occupation but also of indifference. “They shot someone and they continued and moved on their way.”
Today he seeks $70,000 in compensation for Ali’s children. He almost certainly will not get this.
If these events occurred as he describes, the deaths took place in the opening stage of Britain’s six-year occupation of Basra. There was chaos in the regime change. Mistakes were made, tragedies forged – but justice was often not served when, for many, the reason the British were there in the first place was to administer a justice of sorts.
The Ministry of Defence’s official line was that British forces used proportionate force and sought to protect civilians. Yet the city’s reality was far more complicated. Local militias gained influence, criminal networks flourished, and British patrols faced growing hostility. Operations intended to be precise strikes on armed groups sometimes killed civilians, eroding any initial goodwill.
From the outset, says Kdhaer, his opinion of the British was fixed. “From the beginning, I saw them as a colonising power.” But he describes his brother as an innocent in this – he was, Kdhaer says a “simple”man and “forgiving.” He held no political agenda. “If he wanted to fight, he would not be in the street holding his daughter.”
We can only take Khdaer’s word for this, of course, but it is hard to imagine a combatant using their own daughter as a shield or cover in a firefight.
By the time Britain withdrew its last combat troops from Basra in 2009, the city had endured years of militia rule, sectarian violence and political upheaval. Incidents like the killing of Ali and Athraa never entered the official record. Today, without an investigation, they remain in the realm of personal testimony; detailed accounts from those who lived through them, but absent from the histories compiled in London.
This report is one of many in the Ghosts of War – Iraq series, which seeks to piece together the human toll of British military operations in Basra between 2003 and 2009. Each case presents its own evidentiary challenges: the absence of formal investigations, the loss of records, and the distortions of memory over time. Yet taken together, these accounts form an alternative record of the occupation, one in which civilian deaths are neither abstract nor incidental, but central to understanding the war’s legacy.
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