Omar Faruq was shot dead while resisting arrest during a pre-dawn raid by about 200 British troops in Iraq's second biggest city, Basra, British military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge said.

Burbridge called him a "very, very significant man," although he was believed to be hiding inside Iraq, not necessarily operating there.

"The individual had been tracked across Iraq and was in hiding in Basra," Burbridge said.

"Two companies (about 200 troops) launched the operation in the early hours of this morning. The troops returned to base without any multinational force casualties."

Faruq, a Kuwaiti citizen who was captured in Indonesia in June, 2002, was described by Washington as the most senior al Qaeda figure in southeast Asia, a key link between Osama bin Laden's followers and Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiah militants.

He was one of four men who escaped from the high-security US detainee center at Bagram air base north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in June last year.

Washington did not reveal that he had escaped until six months later, when defense lawyers demanded he be produced as a witness at the trial of an army sergeant accused of abusing prisoners in Bagram. US officials were then forced to reveal that he could not testify because he had escaped.

Source: Reuters