Paras fired rubber bullets before troops were killed

Two days before six British soldiers were killed by a mob in Majar al-Kabir, paratroops fired rubber bullets at a hostile crowd, Geoff Hoon said yesterday.

The Defence Secretary confirmed the 1st Battalion of The Parachute Regiment had met resistance in the town 48 hours before the killings. The patrol, Mr Hoon said, had faced about 500 "hostile" Iraqis and fired baton rounds "to enable them [the soldiers] to be able to leave the town". Two days later, troops came under attack again, on the same day that the Royal Military Police were killed in a separate part of town.

The first clash led to an agreement with local leaders the following day that weapons searches would be suspended - handing over responsibility for recovering heavy weapons to the Iraqis themselves.

Mr Hoon's written statement to the House of Commons - on the day he watched a plane carrying the coffins of the six young men touch down at RAF Brize Norton - explained that the Red Caps arrived at the police station on 24 June at about the same time as a 1 Para patrol entered another part of the town. The paratroops were attacked by a crowd - as happened two days earlier - while other Iraqis moved to the police station.

"While attempting to move their vehicles inside the police compound, the RMP came under fire and it seems at least one of them was killed at that point. The crowd, evidently, then stormed the police station. British forces were informed a short while later, by local Iraqis, that all six of the RMP personnel had been killed.

"We understand that attempts were made to contact the RMP section as the events unfolded. That is one of the details we will be trying to establish as part of the investigation," Mr Hoon declared.

While locals have claimed that as many as four Iraqis died during the confrontation, Mr Hoon was unwilling to comment further yesterday while an inquiry was continuing. He conceded investigators might never find out "with absolute certainty" what happened.

British troops had wanted to search for weapons in the "fiercely independent" Majar al-Kabir though no searches had been conducted in the town itself, he said.

"Local religious leaders had called for further searches to be resisted and, on 22 June, a 1 Para patrol in the town were faced with the hostile crowd."

Two days later, the RMP soldiers from 156 Provost company, attached to 16 Air Assault Brigade, planned to visit three towns. "Routine force protection measures in place required that they should all be armed, should have their body armour and helmets with them, should have working communications and that there should be at least two vehicles - in actual fact they had three," Mr Hoon said.

Yesterday, the victims arrived in Britain. The first coffin - that of Sergeant Simon Hamilton-Jewell, 41, from Chessington, Surrey - was taken off the C-17 transporter plane as the Coldstream Guards played Beethoven's Funeral March. The rest - Corporal Russell Aston, 30, from Swadlincote, Derbyshire; Corporal Paul Long, 24, from Colchester, Essex; Corporal Simon Miller, 21, from Washington, Tyne and Wear; Lance Corporal Benjamin Hyde, 23, from Northallerton, North Yorkshire; and Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, 20, from Llanuwchllyn, near Bala, North Wales - were brought out to waiting hearses.

As well as Mr Hoon, the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson attended and the Duchess of Gloucester, Deputy Colonel-in-Chief of the Adjutant General's Corps, represented the Royal Family.

Jack Straw promised yesterday, during a short visit to Baghdad and Basra, that British and US troops would not be driven out of Iraq by guerrilla attacks. He said: "The actions against the coalition won't succeed and will be dealt with." The vigour with which Mr Straw rebutted suggestions of a withdrawal shows the concern over increasing armed resistance in Iraq. Since the official end of the war, 31 American and British troops have been killed and 178 wounded in attacks. Mr Straw said that military commanders, with the support of their governments, would "deal with the remnants of the Baathist regime and the criminals alongside them".

Mr Straw said that "there is absolutely no question of those attacks leading to a pull-out". Britain currently has some 11,000 soldiers in Iraq.