British troops in Iraq said yesterday they had killed one of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's top global lieutenants, who escaped from a US prison in Afghanistan last year.

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

US leaders have described Faruq as the top al Qaeda operative in southeast Asia. He was caught in Indonesia in 2002 and held at a high-security detention centre at Bagram airbase north of the Afghan capital Kabul until his escape last year.

"The individual had been tracked across Iraq and was in hiding in Basra," Major Burbridge said, calling him a "very, very significant man".

"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, once believed to be the main link between bin Laden's followers and the Jemaah Islamiah militant group blamed for bombings in Indonesia, was one of four men who escaped from Bagram in July last year.

Washington did not reveal that he had got away until November, when defence lawyers demanded he be produced as a witness at the trial of a US army sergeant accused of abusing prisoners in Bagram. US officials were then obliged to reveal that he could not testify because he had escaped.