Military police are investigating allegations that British troops mutilated the bodies of Iraqi fighters after a skirmish near the town of Majar al Kabir last month.

The allegations appeared in death certificates written by the director of the town's hospital the day after the May 15 firefight.

Dr Adel Salid Majid claimed that some of the 22 corpses handed over to the hospital by British troops showed signs of mutilation and torture, according to a report in The Guardian, which has seen the death certificates.

But his assessment was questioned by another senior Iraqi doctor who saw one of the dead men at Amara General Hospital, where the bodies were first taken. The second doctor told the paper that the wounds were consistent with a fierce gun battle.

As part of their investigation, the military police are studying photographs of the bodies, the original death certificates and part of a video shot by relatives of the deceased at the Amara hospital.

Seven of the death certificates are reported to record allegations of mistreatment, including "signs of beating and torturing all over the body" in one case and "mutilation of the genitalia" in another.

One man – 37-year-old Ali al Jemindari – was described as having had his right arm severed at the shoulder and right eye gouged out, while another's face was said to be distorted.

Dr Majid said that he had been asked to send ambulances to a British Army base near Amara on May 15, the day after a three-hour firefight between soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and Iraqi militia on the Amara-Basra highway.

"On May 15, the police came and asked us to send ambulances to the British base to collect some bodies. When they brought the 22 bodies, it was a surprise to us to see some of these bodies mutilated and tortured," he told The Guardian.

"There was an angry crowd of relatives outside the hospital gates, so we examined the bodies at once and organised the death certificates. We don't have a big refrigerator here, so everyone took the death certificate and the body and buried their family members."

But the unnamed doctor from Amara said that he had examined Mr al Jemindari's body and found his arm was not completely severed and the damage to his eye could have been caused by a bullet.

"What we saw on examination is multiple bullet entries and exits," he told the newspaper. The doctor also hinted that Dr Majid may have come under pressure from angry relatives.

He suggested that a case of such seriousness should not have been dealt with so swiftly in a local hospital with no forensic capabilities, but should have been referred upwards to Basra or Baghdad for full investigation.

An MoD spokesman declined to discuss the case this morning, saying: "The Royal Military Police are looking at the evidence. It is too early to speculate about the outcome of any investigation at this stage."

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