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Troops find baby in weapons cache
BASRA, Iraq -- British soldiers have saved the life of a baby girl after finding her in a padlocked box in a weapons cache in Basra, the Ministry of Defence said. Entering a house during a weapons search in the southern Iraqi port city Sunday, Pvt. Damien Kenny, 18, and Pvt. Jonathan Hunt, 21, found a 3-foot-long locked metal box. When they opened it, they found the baby, barely two days old, wrapped in a blanket and lying among rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK47s, ammunition, knives and bayonets. "We were expecting to find weapons hidden in the box," Kenny said. When they saw the baby was no longer breathing, the privates began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "We couldn't believe it when we saw it was a baby girl, and we had to try something. ... We thought she would not recover until I felt her squeeze my finger," Kenny said. The soldiers also found the baby's mother, who identified her daughter. They are now both being cared for in a hospital, where the baby is said to be "safe and well." "It is unclear why the child had been placed in the locked container, although it has been established that the baby had been born prematurely," a spokesman at the British command center in Basra said. It is thought she had been inside the box for at least 10 minutes. "We followed it up and the mother has actually said that it was the father who put the young child inside the ammunition box," said Lt. Craig Rogers, who commanded the unit that found the baby, The Associated Press reported. The father was arrested, Rogers told London radio station LBC. The baby was found after British soldiers cornered five terror suspects in a house deep inside Basra, the UK Press Association reported. Four soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment had chased the armed Iraqi men into the house early Sunday following reports of looting at a water treatment plant. After forcing entry to the house, they arrested the men and immediately began to sweep the area for any weapons which may have been stashed there by soldiers still loyal to Saddam Hussein's deposed regime. During the search they first discovered a large white bag containing 1 million Iraqi Dinars before coming across the padlocked metal box containing the baby girl. The troops named the baby Rose after the red rose of the Lancashire regiment. Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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