Bodies of five killed in Iraq return to US

The bodies of three soldiers and two medical officers who were allegedly shot dead by a fellow US soldier at a mental health counseling clinic in Baghdad were returned to the United States.

Family members of three of those killed gave permission for photographers to document the return of their bodies, which were tucked in transfer cases covered with American flags and unloaded from a Boeing 747 cargo transport plane.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, boarded the plane and stood in the cargo hatch as the cases were brought off. He later stood on the tarmac as the cases were transferred onto a mortuary transport vehicle to be taken for funeral preparations, an AFP photographer said.

Army Sergeant Christian Bueno-Galdos, 25; Private First Class Michael Yates, 19; and Major Matthew Houseal, 54, were the three whose flag-covered temporary caskets were allowed to be photographed.

The five died "from injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident" at the Camp Liberty base in Baghdad, the Pentagon said in a statement. The incident remained under investigation.

Sergeant John Russell, 44, whose unit is preparing to leave Iraq within months, has been charged with murder.

Due to concerns over the state of Russell's mental health, his commanding officer about a week earlier had ordered that the soldier's weapon be confiscated and that he should go for counseling, a US military spokesman said in Baghdad on Tuesday.

However, details of the chronology of events and more specifically how Russell, who was on his third tour of Iraq, had come to acquire the second weapon that allowed him to allegedly shoot his comrades were still being investigated.