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In an extract from his memoirs, "A Journey" former British Premier Tony Blair has said that he was "desperately sorry" over the deaths in the Iraq war.
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The extracts which were released on Tuesday, Blair said he was "sorry for the lives cut short", but maintained it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He said the aftermath of the 2003 invasion was "terrible" and said he wept over the loss of life. Blair said he still felt a sense of "anguish" for the relatives of those killed in the conflict. "The anguish arises from a sense of sadness that goes beyond conventional description or the stab of compassion you feel on hearing tragic news," he wrote, "Tears, though there have been many, do not encompass it."
"I feel desperately sorry for them, sorry for the lives cut short, sorry for the families whose bereavement is made worse by the controversy over why their loved ones died, sorry for the utterly unfair selection that the loss should be theirs," he added.
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In the memoirs, based on a decade of his being in office, Blair acknowledges that "we did not anticipate the role of Al-Qaeda or Iran" in post-invasion planning.
He added: "On the basis of what we do know now, I still believe that leaving Saddam in power was a bigger risk to our security than removing him and that, terrible though the aftermath was, the reality of Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq would at least arguably be much worse."
The former Prime Minister has reported to have announced this month that he will donate all the proceeds of the autobiography to the Royal British Legion, a charity which helps severely injured war veterans.
He is reported to have received a 4.6-million-pound (5.6 million euro, $7.2 million) advance for the book. The sales are expected to generate a far bigger return. The book has hit the shops on Wednesday.
According to reports by Reuters, online seller Amazon said "A Journey" was already ranked 11th on the bestseller list of its British site.
