LONDON: Allegations of persistent and serious misconduct by British soldiers in their treatment of the civilian population in southern Iraq are being investigated by the military authorities.

One soldier has revealed details of savage beatings meted out to hooded captives in Basra to the Sun newspaper, which it said would lead to a charge of manslaughter being laid against a private in the Queen's Lancashire Regiment.

"You take a baby's cry, multiply it a thousand times and add hurt and anger and pain into it," the soldier told the tabloid, which has backed British involvement in the invasion of Iraq to the hilt.

Military police are reported to be investigating allegations that members of the regiment humiliated prisoners by forcing them to drink urine and by hurling racist abuse at them.

The incidents are reported to follow the death of an officer in the regiment as a result of a roadside bomb. The Guardian, which has steadfastly opposed the war, reported last weekend the Ministry of Defence was facing lawsuits over the deaths of at least 18 Iraqi civilians.

The MoD has refused to accept liability in all the cases but has nevertheless offered compensation to some of the families of the victims. Among the alleged victims are an Iraqi policeman, a woman shot while sitting down to her evening meal in Basra and a 13-year-old boy who handled a cluster bomblet.

"The 18 Iraqis are the tip of the iceberg," lawyer Paul Shiner told the left-liberal daily, adding there were "circumstances where it is crystal clear the UK armed forces are to blame, often because they've shot people by mistake".

Its correspondent in Basra told how British troops raided a hotel in the southern Iraqi city at dawn on September 14 last year, seizing Baha Mousa, 26, who was working on the reception desk.

Four days later Mousa's father Daoud, a colonel in the Basra police identified his son's body. "I could see his nose was broken... The skin on his wrists had been torn off, the skin on his forehead was torn away, and beneath his eyes there was no skin either... On his legs I saw bruising from kicking," the colonel told the Guardian.

Two other members of the hotel's staff told how they were repeatedly kicked, punched and forced to crouch in stress positions for 48 hours. There were also reports the British soldiers had taken money from the hotel safe.

The Mousa family has accepted 3,000 dollars in compensation, but turned down a further 5,000 offered without admission of responsibility. "That was an insult to our dignity. It is an ugly crime, and nothing except full justice will get rid of the ugliness," the victim's brother Alaa said.

The Independent on Sunday described the death of a 53-year-old primary school headmaster, named as Abdel Jabr Mousa, who was found by his family in a Basra hospital, his head covered in blood. His son Bashar told the paper the last he heard from his father were screams as he was beaten with a rifle butt by British soldiers. -dpa