Rose in bullet box

The BBC reports that two young British soldiers have saved the life of an abandoned newborn Iraqi girl after finding her in an ammunition dump.

Private Damien Kenny and Private Jonathan Hunt of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment were searching a house in Basra after rounding up five terror suspects when they found two days old baby in a dusty 3ft-long padlocked metal box and nestling among rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK47s and ammunition. Tightly swaddled and prematurely born, she was no longer breathing.

The squaddies began giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and a few minutes later Rose – named by the soldiers after the red rose of their Lancashire regiment – squeezed Private Kenny’s finger.

The Army was able to track her down and mother and daughter have been reunited in hospital. Lieutenant Craig Rogers, who is in charge of the unit which found Rose said:

The mother has actually said that it was the father who put the young child inside the ammunition box. He has been arrested by ourselves.

Four soldiers from the 1st Battalion The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment had chased armed Iraqi men into the house in the Al Jubaylah area of Basra early on Sunday following reports of looting at a local water treatment plant. They were arrested and the baby was found – along a large white bag containing one million Iraqi Dinars – in the subsequent routine search of the house.

And all this without a search warrant…!

Update: The first commenter in a fit of otherwise commendable paranoia against the BBC wants to wait for a confirmation. So far I have found Annanova reporting the same story pretty much verbatim. I shall keep searching…

Another update: And here is SkyNews with the same story. Here is CNN’s version of the same event.

Update: Ignore the previous updates. The author of this post has gone off the rails.