Hunt for soldiers' killers continues

The hunt for the killers of six British soldiers in Iraq was continuing today after the British government warned it would be days before the truth of what happened emerged.

A major investigation is under way to discover why six British Royal Military Police soldiers were gunned down in the southern town of Al Majar al-Kabir on Tuesday.

The inquiry is also expected to examine reports that some of the soldiers fought against the armed mob for up to two hours before they were killed.

A senior British officer described the deaths of the Red Caps as “unprovoked murder”, but witnesses in the southern Iraq town claim the soldiers opened fire on demonstrators first.

An urgent review of troop numbers and tactics in Iraq has been launched and Britain's Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has raised the possibility of sending thousands more troops to the country.

British army investigators are working to piece together the events, but Britain's Ministry of Defence spokesman warned last night it could be days before a clear picture emerged.

He said there were added difficulties as there were no surviving British witnesses to the attack.

“We are aware of the differing reports and we are trying to find all these witnesses,” the spokesman said.

“We are having to build a picture of what happened and the whole sequence of events. People are working very hard on this and hopefully it will become clearer but that could take a few days.”

Britain's MoD categorically denied earlier reports that British officers had given the townspeople a 48-hour ultimatum to hand over the guilty men.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the six men, from Colchester-based 156 Provost Company, which is attached to 16 Air Assault Brigade, had been doing an “extraordinary and heroic job”.

The head of the US administration in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said the attacks could have been the work of Ba’athists loyal to Saddam Hussein.

The British soldiers were killed in the town, near Basra, amid a reported two-hour gun battle which left a police station, where four of them were holed up, riddled with bullets.

The MoD named the troops as Sergeant Simon Alexander Hamilton-Jewell, 41, from Chessington, Surrey; Corporal Russell Aston, 30, from Swadlincote, Derbyshire; Corporal Paul Graham Long, 24, from Colchester; Corporal Simon Miller, 21, from Tyne and Wear; Lance Corporal Benjamin John McGowan Hyde, 23, from Northallerton, North Yorkshire; and Lance Corporal Thomas Richard Keys, 20, from Llanuwchllyn, near Bala, north Wales.

Their deaths represent the heaviest single combat loss for British forces since the 1991 Gulf War.

The killings take the British death toll since the Iraq war began in March to 43.

British military spokesman in Iraq, Lieutenant-Colonel Ronnie McCourt, said the attack was unprovoked, adding: “It was murder.”

But local policeman Abbas Faddhel said the British soldiers shot dead four civilians during a protest against heavy-handed British tactics during a weapons sweep in the area.

One witness said British soldiers first fired rubber bullets and then live ammunition into the crowd.

It was the second attack on British troops that day after eight soldiers from 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, were wounded, three of them seriously, in a firefight with Iraqi gunmen in the south of the country.

The clashes raised fears that violence is spreading to previously calm regions of Iraq, despite assurances by US officials that they were mopping up resistance.

Al Majar al-Kabir, where the British are training local Iraqi police, is a mostly Shiite town about 180 miles south-east of Baghdad and just south of Amarah.

Major Bryn Parry-Jones, commanding officer of 156 Provost Company, said the deaths had hit hard at the tight-knit unit.

He added: “We ask our men and women to risk the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country, and it is the sad truth that sometimes that sacrifice comes to pass.”

The families of the victims were being comforted by relatives and friends.