Frantic attempts were made to call off American aircraft as they targeted a convoy of British tanks in Iraq, an inquest was told yesterday.

Smoke identifying the tanks as friendly forces was sent up and tank commanders radioed air controllers, but they were told that the aircraft were being flown by “rogue” pilots who could not be contacted. Instead, they swooped over the convoy once more, setting tanks on fire and killing Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, 25, from Windsor, Berkshire.

Corporal Ashley Bell told Lance Corporal Hull’s inquest, in Oxford, of his shock when the aircraft continued to bomb the tanks as they conducted a reconnaissance mission near Basra in southern Iraq, in March 2003. “We started to realise this was a friendly-on-friendly and I got on to the radio,” said Corporal Bell, a staff corporal at the time of the incident. “I asked for a ‘Stop stop stop, check fire’, at which everyone in our forces is supposed to stop firing.” But he said that he got no response and the aircraft attacked again.

Andrew Walker, the Oxford-shire assistant deputy coroner, said: “It must be hard to describe your shock at having called in a ‘Stop, stop, stop’ to see these aircraft coming again?” Corporal Bell said: “I got on to the net [radio network] and then screamed a ‘Stop, stop, stop’ again. However, the British Forward Air Controller basically said they were rogue pilots that were working on their own.”

The inquest was told that up to 100 villagers, some waving white flags, were 100 metres away. It is thought that several were killed. Lance Corporal Steven Gerrard said he had “never heard anything like” the sound as the aircraft opened fire.

The inquest continues.

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