Investigation into British deaths in Iraq could take days

IT will be days before British Army investigators know why six military police were killed in Iraq, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said last night.

A senior British officer described the deaths of the men yesterday in al-Majar al-Kabir as unprovoked murder but witnesses in the southern Iraq town claim the soldiers opened fire on demonstrators first.

An investigation is underway but a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said it could be days before a clear picture emerged. He said added difficulties were that there were no surviving British witnesses.