THE bodies of four British soldiers - two of them women - who were killed in Iraq last week arrived back in the UK yesterday.

The four, all based at Catterick Garrison, in North Yorkshire, were flown into RAF Lyneham, in Wiltshire, for a repatriation ceremony.

On Wednesday night in Basra, British troops held a sunset ceremony before the four, killed by a roadside bomb, were flown home.

Second Lieutenant Joanna Yorke Dyer, Corporal Kris O'Neill, Private Eleanor Dlugosz and Kingsman Adam James Smith died on April 5, making it the bloodiest day for British troops in Iraq since last November. They were inside a Warrior armoured vehicle returning from patrol near Basra when insurgents struck.

A Kuwaiti interpreter was also killed and a fifth soldier seriously injured in the blast, which left a 3ft-deep crater in the road.

News of the four soldiers' deaths broke as it was announced that the 15 naval personnel who had been held captive in Iran were to be freed.

Second Lieutenant Dyer, from Yeovil, Somerset, was at Sandhurst Military Academy with Prince William, who had described her as a "close friend" and expressed his deep sadness at her death.

They were both commissioned as officers on the same day in December, at a parade at the academy attended by the Queen.

She was serving with 2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment when she was killed.

Fellow victim Kingsman Smith, from Liverpool, was in the same regiment, while Cpl O'Neill, who lived at Catterick, and Private Dlugosz, from Southampton, were both in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Their deaths took the number of UK service personnel killed in Iraq to 140, of whom 109 have died in action.

A spokesman for RAF Lyneham said the four coffins, each draped in a Union flag, were taken off a C-17 aircraft by pallbearers. They were marched slowly past the watching families to hearses waiting to transfer the bodies into the care of the Wiltshire coroner.