Regiment honours troopers killed in Bosnia

Funerals were held 10 miles apart yesterday for two of the three British soldiers killed last week when their armoured vehicle hit a mine during peacekeeping duties in Bosnia.

Trooper Andrew Ovington, 25, was buried at Easington in Co Durham, while in Silksworth, Sunderland, a service was held for Trooper John Kelly, 21, who was also killed in the incident on 28 January.

In Easington, a Light Dragoons regimental bearer party carried the coffin into the church where Ovington and his widow, Tracy, were married just three years ago, a few months before he joined the Army. Tracy, Ovington's parents, Joan and Tom, brothers Stephen, Graham and Tony, and his sister, Janet, led 150 mourners as they followed the bearer party to the church.

After the service the cortege moved on to Easington Colliery cemetery where a Royal Scots Dragoon Guard piper played a lament and there was a final salute from a firing party.

At Silksworth, about 300 mourners for Kelly were led by his father, Dennis, stepmother Amanda, mother Ann and stepfather Colin Swain, to the church and a hall where the service was relayed. A cremation followed at Sunderland.