Baghdad, 2006/12/30, IRIB 
 
A British soldier was killed by roadside bomb while on patrol near the city of Basra in southern Iraq, the Ministry of Defence in London announced Friday.

The soldier, who has yet to be named, was said to have been taking part in a routine patrol in a warrior armoured fighting vehicle, when it was targeted.

He was reported to have been seriously injured before being airlifted to a field hospital at Shaibah logistics base, where he died later.

There were no other casualties reported in the incident.

His death takes the number of UK service personnel who have died since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to 127.

Of those, 96 died in action, while the rest were in accidents or of natural causes and illnesses or remain unexplained.

News of the latest fatality came as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams warned in an interview that the political mistakes of going to war had "put our own troops increasingly at risk in ways that I find deeply disturbing."

Iraq-Invasion-UK-Death