This article forms part of a series documenting civilian harm in Basra during British military control between 2003 and 2009. Drawing on testimony, documentary records and contemporaneous correspondence, the series examines incidents that were rarely investigated and often excluded from official accounts, but which continue to shape the lives of those affected. This report is based on interviews conducted in Iraq in 2025 and a review of claims documentation submitted to the British military.
On the evening of 30 April 2007, Hassan Ali Abood Hassan was playing football in a sandy open yard in the Hay al-Hussein district of Basra. It was around 6.30pm. The heat of the day was receding and, according to his father, more than 30 young men and boys had gathered out in the gloaming to play. They did so on your average evenings.
The evening itself was a calm one. There were no warnings that the area was dangerous, no curfew in place, and no fighting reported in the immediate vicinity that day.
Hassan was 21 years old. He had left school and was working as a building labourer. He was not married. He never would be.
What happened next is described consistently by those present, though it cannot be independently corroborated.
Reportedly out of the blue, a single missile was fired from an aircraft overhead, the missile is identified by witnesses as having been British. The rocket landed among the players.
Five people were killed. At least eight others were injured. Hassan was amongst them.
Hassan survived the initial blast. Shrapnel struck his right eye and penetrated his spinal cord. He was taken first to Basra General Hospital, where his father says staff initially refused to register him, before being transferred to the Educational Hospital (Al-Sadr). When his father arrived, Hassan was conscious and able to speak, though disoriented.
He would never walk again.
Hassan spent 19 days in hospital before being discharged home. The injuries left him blind in one eye and paralysed from the waist down. He lost control of his bladder and required daily care. Metal fragments from the missile remained lodged in his head and spine. Doctors told the family they could not be safely removed.
For the next 18 years, Hassan lived on a wheelchair.
He could speak clearly and remained mentally aware. But he sould not sit comfortably again and pain dogged his life.
His existence was reduced to the tyranny of need. His father and brother cared for him, washing and lifting him daily. His mother helped when she could, though Hassan was ashamed of needing such care. He became prone to seizures and bouts of anger, often striking his head in frustration.
“He was young,” his father says. “He saw others playing football, getting married, living their lives.”
The family sought treatment abroad. Hassan was taken to India for stem-cell procedures and later to Iran. The treatments brought no improvement. His father estimates the family spent around $15,000 on medical care in India and several hundred dollars more in Iran, exhausting their savings.
Hassan never married. He was unable to work. He received a small monthly payment from an Iraqi government scheme for victims of terrorism, equivalent to around $600, but relied otherwise on his family. Over time, his health deteriorated. Recurrent infections weakened him. Doctors later said that the retained shrapnel in his head caused a cerebral haemorrhage.
Hassan Ali Abood Hassan died on 25 January 2025. He was buried in Najaf.
He was, arguably, the last civilian victim of the British invasion of Iraq.
The claim
Shortly after the incident in 2007, Hassan’s father attempted to seek redress. He was told to submit a claim to the British military’s Area Claims Office, then based at Basra International Airport. The written response he received set out the terms under which compensation might be considered.
Compensation, the letter explained, would be paid only where it could be proven that British forces had been negligent. Claims would take weeks or months to process. Fatality cases could take longer. Claimants were advised not to attend the airbase in person. If a payment were made, it would be final and would require the claimant to sign a declaration waiving further claims. If negligence could not be established, the claim would be denied.
British personnel later visited the family and gathered information. Photographs were taken and statements recorded. According to the father, the process then stalled. When British forces withdrew from Basra, responsibility for the case appeared to pass briefly to American forces, who later informed the family it was not their responsibility. Justice fell through the cracks.
The father says he was unable to pursue the matter through the British embassy in Baghdad due to cost and insecurity. A local intermediary later took the file and ceased responding.
In the end, no compensation was ever paid.
Hassan’s father says others with false or exaggerated claims received payments, while his son did not.
An unresolved record
If events did occur as described, they took place in the later years of Britain’s occupation of Basra, a period marked by militia control, criminal violence and frequent air operations. British forces maintain that they sought to minimise civilian harm and used proportionate force.
Yet incidents such as this rarely appear in public operational summaries, and no investigation into the strike has been identified.
Whether the missile was fired on the basis of a legitimate military target, faulty intelligence, misidentification, or error remains unknown. What is not disputed is the outcome: a football game ended in multiple deaths, and one young man spent the rest of his life paralysed.
For Hassan’s father, the injury was never only physical. “My son lost his youth,” he says. “At the age of roses, he was on a wheelchair. All he thought about was when he would die, to end his suffering.”
This account, like others in the Ghosts of War – Iraq series, relies on personal testimony, documentary fragments and partial records. Taken alone, it raises unanswered questions.
Taken together, these cases form an alternative record of the occupation.
A record in which civilian harm was neither rare nor fully accounted for, and in which the consequences of a single strike could last a lifetime.
Below is a letter shown to AOAV by Hassan Ali Abood Hassan’s father. It is a police report from the time of Hassan’s injury. Below is a précis translation.
Republic of Iraq
Ministry of Interior
Basra Police Command
Date: 30/4/2007
At approximately 6:30 pm, while a number of young people were playing football in an open area known as Hajiyah Square in the Hay al-Hussein district, a rocket fell suddenly in the area, causing a number of martyrs and injured persons. Immediately after the incident, the security forces and ambulance services arrived at the scene. The injured were transferred to Basra General Hospital, and the bodies of the martyrs were taken to the Forensic Medicine Department. Initial investigations indicate that the rocket was fired from the air, and according to available information at the time, it is believed to have been launched by British forces.
As a result of the explosion, the following casualties were recorded:
- Martyrs:
One civilian named Karar Khudair Abbas (owner of a vehicle oil-changing workshop), along with others whose identities were not fully established at the time. - Injured:
Hassan Ali Abood Hassan,
Ali Khairy Attwan,
Hamid Majeed,
Maher Karim,
and others with varying degrees of injury.
The area was secured, statements were taken from witnesses, and a report was prepared and submitted to the competent authorities for further investigation. This report was written and signed by the duty officer, and stamped with the official seal of the Basra Police.
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