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One of the dead was named by the Australian government as Flight Lieutenant Paul Pardoel, 35, a former member of the Royal Australian Air Force who had enlisted with the RAF.

An Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokeswoman said that the dead man had dual Australian-British nationality, and had been living in Britain with his wife and his young son and daughters for the last three years, based at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire.

Flight Lieutenant Pardoel's father, John, 78, from Melbourne, said that British High Commission officials rang him to tell him and his wife Margaret of their son's death.

Captain David Orwin, a military spokesman in Basra, said: "We are still searching for survivors and attempting to ascertain the cause of the crash."

The relatively slow, low-flying Hercules, renowned for its reliability, crashed in clear conditions. Eyewitnesses said the debris was scattered over a large area suggesting that the aircraft broke up in the air.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, told MPs that the next of kin of those presumed dead in the Hercules crash were being informed and the Ministry of Defence would only release the names after this process was complete.

He said: "I know the House will join me in sending our deepest condolences and sympathy to the families of these brave men and to their comrades.

"Yesterday's elections in Iraq demonstrate the vital importance of what those and thousands of other brave British servicemen and women have been helping to achieve in Iraq."

It is not clear why the Hercules, a US-built carrier jet capable of transporting up to 100 soldiers, was making for Balad, 42 miles north of Baghdad, where no British troops are stationed. Balad is the site of one of the largest US air bases in Iraq.

It was speculated last night that the Hercules had been carrying Special Forces troops. At first the lack of a clear statement from the Ministry of Defence about the numbers on board or the

destination of the flight appeared at first to confirm this, but today's announcement that nine of the ten dead were air force crew makes it less likely that the Hercules was being used by the SAS.

Air Vice-Marshall Tony Mason said the plane was probably shot down. He said: "On the face of it we have a fully-serviceable aircraft, we have an extremely competent crew, we have the potential indicator that the first statement said the crash site covered a wide area, which suggests impact in the air rather than the ground. My concern is that at the moment it could very well be hostile action."

He told the Today programme that the Balad base was regarded as a very dangerous destination. He doubted it was a regular run for the crew.

Mr Mason added: "If it is SAS of course we shall probably never know because the Ministry of Defence regards movements of the SAS as very, very highly classified."

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