Arab TV shows bodies of dead British soldiers

THE bodies of two British soldiers were yesterday shown on Arabic satellite TV network al-Jazeera.

The soldiers were said to have been killed and captured in fighting around the town of Al Zubayr, 15 miles outside the second city of Basra, which has been the scene of heavy fighting.

The channel also broadcast footage of what it said was two allied soldiers who had been taken prisoner. Al-Jazeera had described them as British, but later said it was not clear and they could have been American.

It is the third time in four days that film of allied soldiers, captured or killed, has been shown on television.

The footage, which lasted less than 30 seconds, also showed people climbing over the vehicle as the camera filmed the bodies. One man shifted one of the bodies with his foot.

Two British soldiers are still missing after their Land Rover was ambushed on Sunday by Iraqi forces with a rocket-propelled grenade in Al Zubayr.

There was no immediate indication if the soldiers in the footage were these men. An Army spokesman in Qatar said that the film was being investigated.

British prime minister Tony Blair’s official spokesman said no-one within the Government had seen the footage but it was being “looked at with all due urgency”. After showing the two dead soldiers the film cut to show the two prisoners.

They were both thick-set, black men, and one sported dreadlocked hair.

They were indoors and surrounded by people as they stared straight into the camera without saying anything.

Seven US army mechanics died and five were taken prisoner on Sunday after they took a wrong turn and ran into an ambush in Nasiriyah.

A video broadcast later on al-Jazeera showed several of the troops with bullet wounds to the head, indicating they had been shot at close range.

The five captured soldiers, including a woman, were paraded on TV in breach of the Geneva Convention governing PoWs which states they cannot be shown on television if it is to degrade them or expose them to “public curiosity”.

A senior military official told the New York Times yesterday that the soldiers who were shot in the ambush seemed to have been executed.

He added they had learnt of the public executions from a communications intercept.