A group of Iraqi asylum seekers who were deported after four years in Britain accused the Home Office of sending them to their deaths yesterday, as they surveyed the latest bomb outrage in Baghdad that claimed 155 lives.

The men were sent home two weeks ago after the British Government declared that Iraq was safe despite an insurgency that kills more than 300 every month.

Standing in front of the government buildings destroyed by Sunday’s blasts, Kamaran Moulood, 39, said: “I want the British officials who sent us back to Baghdad to see this. We are in hell now. Our lives are in danger here. How much more obvious can it be?”

Mr Moulood spent almost four years in Dover after fleeing Iraq when his brother was killed in his Baghdad home. He was among the first nine non-Kurdish Iraqis to be deported by the Home Office since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The men were put on a plane to Baghdad on October 15 with $100 (£60) in their pockets but no passports or other identity papers. Basam Ahmad, 29, said: “We told them it is not safe. Friends in Baghdad had warned us against coming back.”

“It’s not paranoia,” said Mr Ahmad, who lived in Middlesbrough for almost five years. “Everyone in Baghdad knows the experience. You walk along the street and suddenly a car explodes. It happened here on Sunday. It happens everywhere. I feel no safer than when I left.” On Sunday morning bombs were detonated outside the ministries of Justice and Public Works and by the office of the Baghdad governorate. Officials said that 155 people were killed, including 24 children. The estimated number of wounded exceeds a thousand.

Mr Ahmad and Mr Moulood arrived in Britain illegally after travelling by lorry from Istanbul to Calais. The journey cost them $8,000 (£4,900) each. Now they are penniless. “Without money you are even more unprotected in Baghdad,” Mr Moulood said. “Policemen and officials ask for bribes and if you don’t pay them they do bad things.”

Walking along Haifa Street, where the bombers struck on Sunday, the men contemplated their fate. “I am still alive,” Mr Ahmad said. “But I need to leave this place. Peace may eventually come to Baghdad like the British Government says. But I can’t wait that long. I may be dead by then.”

The men arrived in Britain without valid travel or identity documents. Now they are back home, the lack of documents could have grave repercussions. Iraqi security forces regularly ask for papers at checkpoints. “They take me for an Iranian spy or a terrorist from Syria,” Mr Moulood said. “If I am lucky they will let me go if I give them some money. Or they might kill me.”

The only official document the men have is a letter from the Home Office that they were given for the journey to Baghdad. On the streets of the Iraqi capital showing the letter is even more dangerous than showing nothing.

“There are many terrorist groups that hate the British,” Mr Ahmad said. “It’s suicide to show anyone a letter from the British Government with your name on it.”

A spokeswoman for the UK Border Agency said that the bombs had not changed its policy that Iraq was safe enough for the return of failed asylum seekers. “We only ever force the return of an individual who we and the courts are satisfied are not in need of international protection,” she said.

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