Omar al-Farouk was shot in the early hours of the morning after he opened fire on members of a 250-strong British raiding party.
BAGHDAD: British troops killed a reputed lieutenant of Osama bin Laden in Iraq on Monday, a military spokesman said, more than a year after he escaped from a US air base in Afghanistan.
Omar al-Farouk was shot in the early hours of the morning after he opened fire on members of a 250-strong British raiding party in a house where he was hiding in the southern city of Basra, said British Major Charlie Burbridge.
Farouk, a 35-year-old Kuwaiti, has been accused of leading the Al-Qaeda Islamist network in Southeast Asia. He was arrested by Indonesian authorities in 2002 and passed into US custody, but he escaped on July 10 last year from a US detention facility at Bagram air base, outside the Afghan capital Kabul.
"We tracked this terrorist down to Basra, where we identified that he was in a particular house in the centre of Basra and we launched the operation in the early hours of this morning," Burbridge said.
"As we moved into the house there was an exchange of fire and the individual we're talking about, Omar al-Farouk, was killed, which is regrettable, frankly, as the operation was intended to arrest him," he added.
Burbridge would not go into detail over Farouk's links to militant networks, but he has previously been accused of being a top member of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda and to have planned attacks on western embassies in Asia.
After his arrest and interrogation, US authorities raised their terror threat warning level and briefly closed their mission in Indonesia.
When the militant's escape was revealed a Pentagon official described him as "a senior level insurgent".
Farouk's escape along with three other suspects from Bagram air base was an embarrassment for US authorities, and the militant appeared on Arabic television in a video to brag about his flight.
The Pentagon had been forced to confirm the escape when defence lawyers sought to call him as a witness during the court martial of a US soldier accused of mistreating detainees at Bagram.
Basra is Iraq's second largest city and British soldiers based there as part of a US-led coalition have been battling to quell fighting between local militias, while coming under attack from insurgents.
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