The Ministry of Defence is investigating fresh allegations of abuse by the UK military in Iraq.

Torture and the rape of a 16-year-old by two British soldiers are among 33 cases of alleged abuse against former Iraqi detainees.

Lawyers on behalf of the Iraqis have written to the MoD claiming UK forces used the same methods of sexual humiliation and abuse as witnessed at the now notorious US detention centre Abu Ghraib.

Armed forces minister Bill Rammell today confirmed the MoD were investigating the allegations.

He told the BBC: “About seven of them have come in within the last month".

"The rest of them are cases that date back significantly beyond that period and they are being investigated".

Rammell stressed that the vast majority of the 120,000 British troops who served in Iraq had "conducted themselves to highest standards of behaviour".

He added: “Allegations of this nature are taken very seriously; however, allegations must not be taken as fact and formal investigations must be allowed to take their course without judgments being made prematurely.”

It is claimed the detainees were assaulted and sexually abused by both male and female UK military personnel.

A British newspaper today reported that a 16-year-old Iraqi boy, who was forced to strip and then raped at knifepoint by two male soldiers at the Shatt-al-Arab British camp in 2003, is among those who have come forward.

Other detainees claim to they were forced to watch soldiers performing sex acts on each another, were photographed naked and beaten with electric batons.

In a pre-action protocol letter to the MoD the Iraqis’ lawyer Phil Shiner said: “Given the history of the UK's involvement in the development of these techniques alongside the US, it is deeply concerning that there appears to be strong similarities between instances of the use of sexual humiliation.

"Many of these Iraqis were frightened to come forward and only now have been able to gather the courage to do so.

"That is no mean feat given what they have been through."

Shiner is calling for a public inquiry, claiming hundreds of abuse cases have still not been investigated by the MoD.

Iraqi human rights campaigner Mazin Younis, who has been investigating allegations of abuse by British troops since 2004, said many alleged victims had waited years before coming forward because they were afraid of the consequences of complaining.

Mr Younis told the BBC: “People were quite scared of the British, because the level of abuses was so high that people feared that the British could detain them.

“They would hear that their friends or relatives had probably been detained for years without charges, they have probably been abused.

“They all feared that the British would come back and punish them. Now the British are out.”

“It was quite shocking actually, that we started seeing a pattern very similar to Abu Ghraib where sex or sexual humiliation is used, like playing porn movies in the corridors while the prisoners are in their solitary cells, especially at prayer times.” “Then more serious stuff started coming up, when we realised some female soldiers were exposing themselves in front of prisoners while they were in toilets or showers.”

Eleven US soldiers serving at the Abu Ghraib detention centre were court martialled after photographs emerged of Iraqis being stripped and forced into humiliating poses.

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