Slaughter on the street

This is the latest picture to shock America and pile even greater pressure on George Bush over Iraq.

Sprawled on the floor with their kit strewn around them, these four US Army soldiers were killed in an ambush in the Sunni Muslim city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

Still in their uniforms, the men died as they patrolled a building site, local residents said.

The image emerged today after videotape of the corpses was delivered to the offices of an American press agency but it was unclear exactly when they had died.

No group has claimed responsibility for the killings but Ramadi is part of the so-called Sunni triangle outside Baghdad which has been at the heart of an insurgency bent on expelling US-led troops from Iraq.

There was no comment from the US military command on the deaths, which bring to 619 the number of US soldiers killed in action since the start of the Iraq war last year.

The pictures from the videotape are the latest in a long line which have shaken the American public's support of US involvement in Iraq.

They come just two days after US engineer Paul Johnson was decapitated in Saudi Arabia by an al Qaeda group and after another American hostage, Nicholas Berg, was beheaded in Iraq last month.

Images of a US civilian worker strung up from a bridge and of physical and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the now notorious Abu Ghraib prison have also haunted the

American public conscience.

The latest pictures came as a military judge refused to give the US administration respite ahead of the formal transfer of sovereignty to a new interim government on 30 June by allowing the demolition of Abu Ghraib. President Bush had offered to tear down the Iraqi prison and build a new detention centre to eliminate the legacy of torture and abuse.

But during a pre-trial hearing for one of the US prison guards accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners at the site, judge Colonel James Pohl said it must be preserved indefinitely as

evidence against American soldiers.

He also ruled some of the highestranking US Army staff in Iraq should be called to give evidence.

Lawyers acting for Sgt Javal Davis succeeded in demanding the presence of the top US general in Iraq, Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, along with the chief of the US Central Command-General John Abizaid. A request to seek testimony from higher-ranking witnesses including US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was refused. Sgt Davis, from Maryland, is to stand trial for charges including rendering false official statements and assault as well as maltreatment of detainees.

Army reports quote a witness as saying that he hit prisoners while they were stacked in a pile and stamped on their hands and fingers.

He faces court martial in Iraq along with Specialist Charles Graner and Staff Sgt Ivan "Chip" Frederick.

All three were charged after the CBS television programme 60 Minutes II aired photographs of hooded and naked prisoners being tortured in Abu Ghraib prison.

A hearing for 21-year-old Private Lynndie England, the first soldier to be identified in the pictures, will be held separately on Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where she is now stationed.

As the court hearing took place al Qaeda terrorists prepared to carry out their threat to behead a South Korean hostage after his government refused demands to withdraw its troops from Iraq.