SYDNEY, April 27: Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Thursday publicly apologised to the angry widow of the country’s first soldier killed in Iraq after she was sent a stranger’s body by mistake.

Mr Howard was woken up to take a call from the furious widow of Private Jacob Kovco, who died in a firearms accident last week, once the bungle was discovered on Wednesday night.

Government officials said another body, believed to be that of an eastern European soldier, was flown to Australia while Mr Kovco’s corpse remained in a mortuary in Kuwait.

Mr Howard said Shelley Kovco was very angry about the mix-up when he spoke to her in the middle of the night and demanded every effort be made to return her husband’s body as soon as possible.

He said he understood her anger and had apologised to the widow, who has two young children.

“I just want to say how incredibly sorry I am for what has happened and I wish in some way I could have altered it but I can’t,” he told commercial radio.

The government blamed a private contractor that operates a mortuary in Kuwait for the mistake.—AFP