[LargeAndInCharge]

Published: Today

BRITISH troops will start to come home from Iraq in three months, a senior defence source revealed yesterday.
The final withdrawal from Basra will begin next March, six years after Saddam Hussein’s evil regime was toppled.

It is set to take at least three months for all 4,000 soldiers and airmen, plus their equipment, to be pulled out.

The defence source said: “By the third quarter of next year we will be out of Iraq.”

PM Gordon Brown plans to confirm the withdrawal with a statement to MPs in the New Year.

The withdrawal will provide a much-needed boost for Our Boys in Afghanistan, The Sun can reveal.

Top brass insist they will NOT use the pull-out to switch more soldiers to fighting the Taliban, despite huge pressure from the US.

But they will send a full squadron of Merlin helicopters from Iraq, a massive help to the troubled security mission in Helmand.

Crewed by pilots from the RAF’s 28 and 78 Squadrons, based at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, they can carry up to 24 fully equipped combat soldiers each.

The 8,000 troops in Helmand currently have to share only eight Chinooks.

The chopper shortage has meant many have to go by land, where they have been picked off by booby trap roadside bombs.

Unmanned aerial drones from Iraq will also be used in the province.

A few hundred more soldiers may be sent out as part of a surge in the summer during the Afghan presidential elections.

But it will only be a temporary reinforcement. Instead, soldiers are to be allowed to stay at home to rest and recuperate after years of debilitating overstretch.

The news will be greeted with delight by forces families.

The first troops to leave Iraq will be the 200 at the British HQ in Basra.

Most of the remaining soldiers, from 20 Armoured Brigade, will pull out over May and June. A few hundred British officers and NCOs will stay on to continue training the Iraqi army.

US troops are expected to withdraw in 2010 on the orders of new American president Barack Obama.

A total of 177 British servicemen and women have died in Iraq since March 2003.

thesun.co.uk