A huge C17 transporter plane bearing their coffins touched down at a Royal Air Force base in Brize Norton, west England, where Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram joined relatives for a sombre ceremony.

A band from the Scots Guards dressed in scarlet tunics played a funeral march by Beethoven as the coffins, draped in the British Union Jack, were slowly taken down the ramp of the aircraft.

Among the dead were five Royal Navy lieutenants killed in a collision on March 22 between two Sea King helicopters from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, the navy's flagship which is in the Gulf.

Ten war dead were brought home last week. With a total of 30 British servicemen dead in the Iraq conflict, nine are still to be flown back.

Sixteen of the British dead were killed in accidents. Five have been killed by "friendly fire" and nine have died in action.

Separately, Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, paid a morale-boosting visit to an army centre in Aldershot, southern England, meeting 200 wives, children and relatives of soldiers.

Some 2,500 troops from the Aldershot garrison are deployed in the Gulf.

SPACE.WIRE