The Paras used rubber bullets to try to control the situation; this led to street battles, rifle fire and the cornering of six Royal Military Policemen (RMP) in the police station at Majar al-Kabir.

The Chinook incurred enough airframe damage from Iraqi gunfire that it could not land its QRF element in the town and had to return to Abu Naji where it offloaded seriously injured troops.

The death of the six RMP was one of the most controversial occurrences of the Iraq Campaign involving British forces and remains a topic of debate in political and military circles.

[3] The south-eastern region of Iraq became part of the United Kingdom's Multi-National Division (South East) (MND (SE)) under the framework of Operation Telic.

[9] Majar al-Kabir was known to be awash with weapons as the area was predominantly Shia Muslim, whose people had been brutally treated by the government of Saddam Hussein.

[15] On the 21 June, three days before the Battle of Majar al-Kabir, Major Kemp went into the town to meet the elders and inform them that there would be a British military presence at the police station where they would collect, but not search for, weapons.

[10] At the inquest into the men's deaths in March 2006, it was noted that there had been a mis-translation in the text of the MOU which the Iraqi population read as there being "no necessity that the coalition [troops] be there [the following day].

"[16] Two days before the killings, Two-Zero Alpha, an element of 8 Platoon, C Company (1 Parachute Regiment) were at the police station in Majar al-Kabir to collect weapons that were to be handed in under the amnesty agreement.

With some men on guard duty, the rest were sunbathing and relaxing when a crowd of angry Iraqis arrived at the police station throwing rocks and chanting "no, no, America".

After some warning shots were fired by the British, including one plastic bullet which deflected off the ground and hit a protester in the face,[17] a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) was activated and they arrived in Scimitars and armed Land Rovers to push back the crowd.

[18] On the morning of the battle, a support company platoon had driven through the town and when they reached Camp Abu Naji, they described the area as being "eerily quiet"[19] and those locals that were out on the streets giving them "death stares".

Although the soldiers were well aware that using rubber bullets could either calm or inflame a situation,[27] they felt that they had no choice given the intensity of the crowd, who were being told via the loudspeakers on the minarets[28] that the British were here to "rape the women [and] attack them!

As they were attacked from the front and had to stop, Sgt Gordon Robertson managed to reach the Ops Room at Camp Abu Naji and relay their situation.

The Officer in Charge (OIC) of Alpha, Lieutenant Ross Kennedy, was being targeted by a sniper, and so the decision was made to hold until the QRF (Quick Reaction Force) arrived from Abu Naji to help.

As the damage to the helicopter was severe and casualties were mounting, the pilot, Wing Commander Guy Van den Berg, decided that safest option was to return to base.

[75] The area around Majar al-Kabir is very flat and as a result, HF and VHF radios do not work well; even within close range, there are dead zones where the signal cannot be accessed.

An Iraqi elder appealed to the gunmen surrounding the station to stop shooting and he went to go inside and was granted access by LCpl Tom Keys.

"(Unidentified gunman)[76]During the attack, an Iraqi doctor who was next door to the police station was alerted to the fact of the six RMP being under siege and drove to the edge of town in an ambulance where a major from 1 Para had established an Incident Control Point (ICP).

[89] The decision not to go in and recover the bodies, but to allow the Iraqi doctor to deliver them to 1 Para, was commended by the Army Board of Inquiry as correct and prevented further losses on both sides.

[95][96] The deaths of the six RMP caused a great deal of political unrest in the UK as it was (up to that point) the biggest single loss of life of British forces under enemy fire since the Falklands War.

[14][79] Each of the multiples of British troops that fought in the town (Alpha, Bravo and the QRF) determined that they had killed at least 20 Iraqi nationals each (thereby totaling 60 dead)[note 5][97] with countless more wounded.

[79] Local people claimed that the number of Iraqi dead totalled only four, which was seen as a more palatable figure for senior British commanders to acknowledge, due to the political instability in the region at that time.

[99] Lieutenant Ross Kennedy and Corporal John Dolman were both Mentioned in Despatches for the battle[100] and Sergeant Gordon Robertson was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross.

In 2016, it was reported that Gordon Robertson was selling his medals, including the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross (CGC), in order to raise money and allow his son to get onto the property ladder.

In his post-election speech, Reg Keys called on Tony Blair to apologise to the families of all the dead servicemen and women who had been casualties of the Iraq War.

The inquest heard evidence that the men were only issued with 50 rounds each for their SA-80 rifles and that no satellite phone was allocated to them,[65] although 37 units were available and there was nothing to prevent the Red Caps from signing one out.

Relatives at the inquest demanded an apology from Dr Nicholas Hunt, the government-appointed pathologist, as he had used photographs of the dead men in a seminar in how to set up temporary mortuaries in disaster zones without permission from the families.

The families of the six RMP who were killed were reported to be outraged as in 2003, Geoff Hoon (the defence minister at that time) had told them that the MoD knew who the killers were.

The special forces troops had been investigating the six RMP deaths and been accused of beating the suspects with rifles, placing them in stress positions and subjecting them to punches and kickings.

"[120] In July 2019, The European Court of Human Rights ruled that UK authorities fulfilled their duty to carry out an effective investigation into the killings.