British special forces joined an offensive yesterday involving more than 5,000 US and Iraqi troops, backed by fighter bombers and helicopters, aimed at regaining control of insurgent strongholds in central Iraq. The operation – dubbed Plymouth Rock – appears to mark an escalation in the role of the SAS in Iraq. But the number of British special forces engaged in the operation would be fewer than a hundred. A senior British military spokesman at Kalsu described the operation as a “concentrated effort to deal with the post-Falluja insurgent operation. We are upping the ante and are expecting it to be a relatively intense period of operations.”Full Story