A MOTHER whose teenage son was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq said that she did not accept the Army's apology for confusion over how he died.

Private Michael Tench, 18, of The Light Infantry, was unlawfully killed by blast wounds caused by an explosion while on a Warrior patrol in Basra on January 21, a coroner ruled today.

But Private Tench's mother, Janice Murray, claimed that she was wrongly informed about her sons injuries, saying: "No one from the Army could be truthful regarding the injuries my son sustained or exactly his cause of death."

Giving evidence at the Coroner's Court in Sunderland, Mrs Murray said she initially heard her son had died of a chest wound and that his body was intact, but several days later she was informed that his funeral needed to be postponed for three days for DNA tests to be carried out on separate body parts.

Mrs Murray, 45, from the Carley Hill area of Sunderland, said she was then told by a funeral director that both her sons legs and an arm were missing from the coffin. It was not until August 14, when she saw the photographs of her sons body, that she learnt the true extent of his injuries, the court heard.

A post-mortem examination showed that Private Tench received multiple severe injuries to all areas of his body, which proved fatal, including the loss of one arm and one leg.

Full story in tomorrow's Northern Echo