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Two women were among four British soldiers killed in Basra as the debate grew over putting females in the frontline.
A day after Faye Turney, the mother of a 3-year-old girl, was reunited with her family after being held captive in Iran, two women, a nurse and a member of the Intelligence Corps, were in a party of four killed when patrolling the southern Iraq city in the early hours.
The armoured vehicle in which they were travelling was torn apart by a "colossal" bomb.
A fifth soldier was "very seriously injured" and is being treated in the military hospital in Basra. A civilian interpreter was also killed.
The deaths come at the end of one of the deadliest weeks for the British Army since the invasion of Iraq and follow the shooting dead of two soldiers by a sniper earlier this week.
The death of the women will reinforce the danger faced by troops in southern Iraq.
Never before have two women died in the same incident on the frontline. Their deaths also come at a time of heightened debate about the wisdom of putting female personnel into dangerous positions.
Colonel Bob Stewart said he was against women being close to combat as their deaths or injuries had a debilitating effect on male soldiers.
"It's disquieting for a lot of people in this country when women are put into the frontline because when they are wounded or killed, the men around them find it very difficult to operate," he said. Stewart said he had twice been present when women soldiers died.
"One was in my arms after a bomb in Northern Ireland and I was inconsolable afterwards. I could not operate. If you put women in the frontline because they are equal then you have to expect that there will be operational casualties."
Five females have been killed out of the 140 British dead in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
In a war with no frontline in the traditional sense, the 18,000 women in the Armed Forces increasingly find themselves in the fighting as medics, signallers and logistics crews.
There are about 1600 female troops on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most of the time they are exposed to the dangers of roadside bombs and mortar fire. There are no restrictions on women deployed on operations unless they are pregnant.
While they cannot join a unit where the primary duty is "to close with and kill the enemy" - for example the infantry or cavalry - women undertake a number of hazardous postings.
- Independent
