UK bomb experts were executed by Iraqis, insists Blair

Confusion surrounded the death of two British bomb disposal experts last night after the Prime Minister insisted they had been executed.

Tony Blair said Sapper Luke Allsopp, 24, of north London, and Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, 36, from Essex, were victims of "an act of cruelty beyond comprehension."

But a British military official at Central Command in Qatar said: "While the footage shown [on the Qatari satellite TV channel al-Jazeera] yesterday suggested that they might have been executed, the pictures are of a poor quality and don't provide us with the facts."

And the sister of Mr Allsopp is reported to have told the Daily Mirror that he had not been executed by the Iraqis. The relatives of the men were said to be "furious" with the claim by Mr Blair.

Predictably, Iraq also denied the charge and said the Prime Minister had "lied to the public".

Both men were members of 33 EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Engineer Regiment, a specialist bomb disposal unit of the Royal Engineers, based at Carver Barracks, Wimbish, Essex. Mr Cullingworth was married with two sons. They went missing in fighting around the town of Zubayr, near Basra, in southern Iraq on Sunday.

Their bodies were filmed lying near their Land Rover. One man appeared to have been shot in the chest while the other man's wounds were unclear.

During a joint press conference with George Bush at Camp David, Mr Blair condemned the broadcast and said the atrocity was a "flagrant" breach of the Geneva Conventions. The Prime Minister said: "It is beyond the comprehension of anyone with an ounce of humanity in their souls."

Describing the images as a "reality" of Saddam Hussein's regime Mr Blair said: "His thugs prepared to kill their own people; the parading of prisoners of war; and now the release of those pictures of executed British soldiers.

"If anyone needed any further evidence of the depravity of Saddam's regime, this atrocity provides it. It is yet one more flagrant breach of all the proper conventions of war."

However, Mr Blair's official spokes-man later admitted that because the soldiers had not been recovered the Government could not be absolutely sure they had been executed. "Every piece of information we have points to the two men being executed in a brutal fashion," said the spokesman. "That evidence includes the fact that the two bodies were some distance from the vehicles in which they were travelling and they had lost their protective equipment.

"I accept that's not absolute evidence but it points in that direction. The Americans have said also that there is some evidence of their soldiers being killed in that fashion."

But Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Shaf, accused Mr Blair of start- ing a "psychological war". In an interview with Abu Dhabi television last night he said nobody had been executed.

"To launch a psychological war on us he said you have executed (them). We have not executed any-one. They are either killed in the battlefield, and most of them are killed because they are cowards, and the rest are captured."

Two other Iraqi prisoners shown alive in the same broadcast by al-Jazeera were last night identified as "civilian sub-contractors". Reports have claimed they were Kenyans working as humanitarian aid convoy drivers.