A mortar attack wounded four Russians and killed an Iraqi colleague working for an electricity company Saturday in the southern city of Basra, the AFP news agency reported citing Iraqi and Russian officials said.

’Four Russians were wounded, one of them seriously, and one Iraqi killed and another wounded,’ said Lieutenant Colonel Jassim Mohammed, head of the police unit in the Najidiyah district of the city.

Earlier a British military spokesman, citing Iraqi sources, said two of the Russians had died, but Iraqi and Russian officials denied this.

In Moscow, Russia’s foreign ministry said the four ’received light wounds as the result of a mortar explosion. According to information from our embassy, which is in constant contact with them, their lives are not in danger.’

Electricity plant director Yusif Mohammed Flayih Al Maliki told AFP the four Russian experts were wounded, one of the seriously, when mortars hit a caravan in the grounds of the 200 megawatt Najidiya power plant. He said the experts are part of a 14-member team with a Russia firm contracted to rehabilitate the Iraqi plant and arrived in Basra three weeks ago. The plant had been built by a Russian company in 1973.

British military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge said that rockets or mortars appeared to have been fired at a British military base in Basra but had fallen short and hit the power plant. British bases in Basra regularly come under rocket and mortar attack from Shia militia groups attached to political and tribal factions vying for control of the city in the chaos of post-invasion Iraq.

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