‘Run or you will die.’

There is little to mark where the soldiers died, only a mound of shattered glass, holes gouged in a peeling plaster wall and a rusty smear of dried blood along a filthy corridor floor.

Nor is it clear how they died. The rear of the police station is still burning. The front wall, below the small turret where a torn Iraqi flag is flying, is covered in bullet scars.

Two of the six-strong detachment of British Royal Military Police killed in this scruffy, sun-baked town on Tuesday morning tried to hold off their attackers from the roof of the police station. The rest took up positions in three rooms on the ground floor, facing a broad dirt road, a wall and a secondary school.

Their attackers came at around 11am and the firefight lasted at least an hour and a half. When a frontal assault failed, the crowd, armed with light and heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, withdrew. A little later an attack across the wasteground on the south side was successful. But whether the attackers had rushed the building under fire is unclear. Some witnesses said the British had run out of ammunition.

After 10 minutes of the firefight the soldiers had a chance to escape. Fifteen local policemen, recruited by the new power in Iraq, were in the station when the attack started. They pleaded with the British soldiers, led by the man they knew as Mr Tim, to flee with them through a back window.

”We said we would protect them and that they should come with us,” Abbas Bairphy, 25, told the Guardian yesterday. ”We knew that we would be killed too because the people thought we were collaborators. But they refused to come with us.”

Bairphy said that Tim told him that his mission was to stay at the police station and asked for a radio. ”He said his own radio had been burned when their vehicle had been set on fire. But I had no radio. I felt bad that they would not come with us. I said, you must come or you will die.” The soldiers did not go and they died.

They were not the only ones to lose their lives that day. A few hundred metres from the police station is the bazaar, where battered trucks were yesterday unloading produce. There are no bullet scars here, but 24 hours earlier a disastrous incident led to claims that five Iraqi men died under British gunfire and sparked the later firefight at the police station.

Majar al-Kabir is a Shia city, and it suffered badly under Saddam Hussein. Here the British and American forces were welcomed as liberators.

The problems appear to have started with a British drive to collect weapons. On Monday morning, residents say, British troops started aggressive searches of homes. As in most of Iraq, almost everybody in Majar al-Kabir is armed, and bearing arms is seen as a fundamental part of life. With security poor, many feel the need for protection.

The raids on Monday morning provoked a protest outside the police station. Bearing placards saying ”Our town is safe. Stop the searches”, around 100 locals gathered.

After two hours, locals say, a British military policeman walked out to talk to them. He told them to disperse or helicopters would come and kill them, they said. The protest broke up and a few hours later four British Warrior armoured personnel carriers took up a position outside the building.

Community leaders then sat down with British officers to broker a deal. The local deputation was led by Talal Abid Ahmed Zubaida, a local prayer leader. After lengthy discussions he and a British officer signed an agreement.

”There is no necessity that the coalition and its agents come to the city. The process of securing weapons in al-Majar district will be supervised by the local security committee,” it reads. ”After a period of a week for informing people, heavy weapons, including Dushka [a Soviet-made heavy machine gun], mortars and anti-aircraft guns will be handed in. We want to see results within one month.”

It was signed by Mr Zubaida and a Captain Chris. ”We thought we had an agreement,” said Zubaida yesterday.

But early on Tuesday patrols — or searches and raids — started again. Parachute regiment soldiers moved through the dusty streets. The locals were incensed and came out of their homes to argue with the British soldiers.

Many stories are now circulating about the behaviour of the British soldiers, few of which can be confirmed. Some say they shot dogs, others allege that the troops stole money and harassed women.

What is certain is that the claims are similar to those made in those cities further north where US troops have adopted an aggressive search policy and routinely seize all money ”to prevent it being used for buying weapons”.

They also search women’s rooms, if not the women themselves. This a violation of local traditions. ”They don’t respect the people and the women. It is very bad according to our Islam,” said Ahmed Younis (32).

Zubeida said he tried to broker a deal. ”I argued with the British for a long time. In the end we agreed that they would stay in their vehicles and stop the searches,” he said.

But, according to locals, the searches did not stop and it appears that, within hours of the discussion, British soldiers dismounted to search more houses. This sparked violence.

At least one of the British vehicles was torched and some kind of firefight followed. A Chinook helicopter coming to support the soldiers was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. Local people then dragged off a British vehicle and burned it.

Then events began to move more swiftly. By about 10am an angry crowd had gathered in the bazaar. What happened next is unclear. Several witnesses said British soldiers moved through the bazaar after searching houses. The witnesses claim they treated local people roughly. ”One threatened a child with his gun,” one said. Another said people started throwing stones at the troops.

As more people gathered, tensions rose. Some say that the soldiers fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowds, though this is unlikely. Most agree that a local man, possibly a former Ba’ath party official, started shooting with a handgun. The British then opened fire.

”It was about 10.15 and the market was very crowded,’ said Younis. ”I threw myself on the ground and shouted to everybody to run away or get down. The shooting lasted for about five minutes but there were bullets going everywhere. They were firing on automatic.”

Younis, who was jailed by Saddam for nine years and says he welcomed the British when they arrived in his town, said that there were around 15 soldiers in two vehicles. ”I couldn’t believe it when they started shooting,” he said.

At least 17 people were hit. They included a 13-year-old girl caught by a ricochet in the shoulder and a nine-year-old boy. Several other casualties have spinal injuries and multiple fractures.

In all, five men have died from their wounds. Three, with head wounds, died almost instantly, according to Dr Hassan Jabar, the assistant director of Majar al-Kabir’s hospital who treated the casualties. A fourth died in an ambulance on the way to Basra. Jabar said he believed the high proportion of head and chest wounds showed the shooting had been carefully targeted.

The fifth to die was Ghazi Musa Hassan (50) the ambulance driver at the main hospital. A single bullet hit him in the heart. Though he was alive when brought to Dr Jabar he died within minutes.

Musa, who had six children, had just finished an overnight shift. He then went home to have breakfast, went back to the hospital to check his vehicle’s engine and then, fatefully, walked through the bazaar on his way home. ”He was a simple poor man,” Jabar said.

As the wounded lay in the bazaar the British soldiers drove away. One local said they retreated to an outlying village. The crowd, however, were incensed. Many returned home to get their weapons — the very arms that the British soldiers had been trying to collect hours earlier. They headed towards the police station where they knew the British army had a presence.

The six MPs at the police station were well known. For a few weeks they had been coming to the station to liaise with and train the hastily recruited local police force. They had faced no animosity before, except the protest a day earlier.

It is unclear whether they knew of events elsewhere as attackers burned their vehicle, where their radio was kept.

The armed crowd was hundreds strong and set on revenge. A siege began. No one in Majar al-Kabir would admit to being among the attackers yesterday so details of the battle are sketchy. By 1pm at the latest, the MPs were dead and though a British army Chinook, dropping thunderflashes and possibly firing, had arrived, it was too late.

According to hospital staff, four Iraqis were injured in the police station attack. The figure could well be higher.

Yesterday Majar al-Kabir was tense but calm. There was also a sense of shock. In a tent Ghazi Musa’s family were welcoming people who had come to pay their respects to the dead ambulance driver.

Khaled Obeid, his cousin, was bewildered by events.

”We did nothing to them. First we welcomed them but now they hurt us. We were thankful to them for getting rid of Saddam but now I do not know.”

There is no evidence that the events are part of a concerted or organised resistance movement. No one here speaks of fedayeen or diehard Ba’athist loyalists. Instead they talk of the violation of honour and tradition and a lack of respect.

There is sympathy for the dead British MPs as well as the locals. ”I am sad and very unhappy for both the Iraqis and the British,” said Jabar. ”I am very sorry. And I am afraid from the future.”

The British version