LONDON, May 28: The BBC reported on Sunday that at least 1,000 British troops have “deserted” the armed forces since the US-led war was launched in Iraq three years ago.

The BBC did not specify how it obtained the figures as Britain’s defence ministry said it knew of only “a handful of deserters since 1989” and that the number of soldiers absent without leave had remained constant since 2001.

During 2005 alone, 377 people deserted and were still missing, the BBC said on its website, adding that so far this year another 189 were on the run. It said some 900 had evaded capture since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003.

“It’s not true,” a spokeswoman at the defence ministry told AFP when asked about the figure of at least 1,000 deserters.

“I think they are talking about soldiers who are absent without leave (AWOL). I think they are talking about the number in the army who remain absent without leave. There have been a handful of deserters since 1989,” she said.

“But basically there’s no significant rise in the number of soldiers going absent without leave each year,” she added.

Nor did any evidence suggest that Iraq was causing them to go AWOL, she said.—AFP