A British soldier was killed and four wounded in an attack on a convoy in southern Iraq yesterday.

The troops were travelling in the country's Maysan region on their way to a meeting with Iraqi security officials when a roadside bomb exploded near the flashpoint town of Al Amarah.

The latest death brings the number of British soldiers who have died in Iraq since the start of hostilities in March 2003 to 88.

Fifty were killed in action, the rest died in accidents or of natural causes or in circumstances still under investigation.

British forces sealed off the attack scene and a helicopter evacuated the injured.

Charles Heyman, senior defence analyst at Jane's Information Group, said Al Amarah, which is 160 miles north of the main British headquarters in Basra, was a "very volatile region".

He said: "There is a sizeable British contingent in that region and relations with the people of Al Amarah are difficult," he said.

"Unfortunately, we have not heard the last from Al Amarah."

In the past two years, the area has seen some of the British Army's fiercest fighting against insurgents.

It was also the scene of an attack on British troops at the beginning of this month, which led to the death of 24-year-old Guardsman Anthony John Wakefield, from the 1st Battalion The Coldstream Guards.

The father-of-three, from Newcastle, was on patrol near the town when a homemade bomb exploded.

The latest attack came as Iraqi security forces launched a high-profile crackdown on terrorists in Baghdad.

Operation Lightning was launched following a bloody wave of militant attacks that have killed more than 700 people since the April 28 announcement of Iraq's Shi'ite-led government.

But despite the heavier-than-normal Iraqi police and army presence throughout the capital and on its southern and northern outskirts, insurgents kept up their steady pace of violence, with a series of suicide bombings and ambushes that left at least 17 people dead.

There are about 8,500 British troops in Iraq, mostly in the south.