Blogger kidnapped and killed in Basra

Steven Vincent's body was found last night on the side of the road. He had been abducted, along with his female translator, outside a currency exchange store.

There are strong suspicions that Mr Vincent, who received numerous death threats, was murdered in an attempt to silence him.

Four days before his death he had written an opinion piece in The New York Times in which he said that the police force in the British-controlled city had been heavily infiltrated by Shia Muslim extremist militias, who were responsible for carrying out hundreds of murders of prominent Sunni Muslims.

He criticised the British, whose 8,000 troops in the area are responsible for security in Basra, for turning a blind eye to abuses of power by Shia extremists. The whole city was "increasingly coming under the control of Shia religious groups, from the relatively mainstream... to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr".

Vincent's blog, In the Red Zone, is here.