Britain Ends Military Mission in Iraq

Britain concluded its naval training mission in Iraq on Sunday, more than eight years after it contributed the second largest contingent of troops to the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Despite having pulled out the vast majority of its troops in mid-2009, Britain's Royal Navy has continued to train Iraqi personnel to defend their territorial waters and offshore oil installations.

"Their contribution was most appreciated and valuable," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told Agence France Presse. "They have given many sacrifices to stabilize (Iraq) and they were the second-largest force of the coalition.

"Mistakes were made, not only by them, but by all of us," Zebari added, declining to give specific details. "But that doesn't diminish their valuable contribution to training, capacity building and, recently, for the protection of our oil ports at the tip of the Gulf."

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a text message that the British naval training mission had "finished" and, when asked to confirm that there were no more British soldiers or sailors left in Iraq, he replied: "Yes."

Some 46,000 British troops were deployed to Iraq in March and April 2003, at the height of combat operations that resulted in Saddam's overthrow and eventual execution for crimes against humanity.

In the aftermath of the invasion, the country was engulfed in a brutal sectarian war which peaked in 2006 and 2007. Tens of thousands of Iraqis died.

Violence has since declined, but attacks remain common.

A total of 179 British personnel died in Iraq in the past eight years.

A small number of service personnel will remain at the British embassy in Baghdad.

"The actual UK maritime agreement comes to an end today but pretty much everyone was out Thursday and Friday," a British defense ministry spokesman said.

"The actual guys came out a couple of days ago."

He added: "There's a few staff left in the diplomatic corps but the deployment of military personnel has finished."

London formally ended military operations in Iraq in April 2009, and pulled out its forces in July that year, but has since been involved in the bilateral naval training mission.