The Pentagon has barred US media from filming the coffins of US servicemembers arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, but the Louisiana National Guard allowed a CBS news crew to film the arrival of six soldiers' coffins at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse, near New Orleans, Louisiana.

Despite the Pentagon request, Lieutenant Colonel Pete Schneider, a spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard told CBS: "What we thought was, we're going to do what the family asked us to do."

Footage broadcast by CBS showed an honor guard carrying the soldiers' flag-draped coffins out of an aircraft, watched by grieving families, to six waiting hearses.

The six soldiers had served in the Louisiana National Guard, all six died last Thursday after their armored vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

It was the largest number of US troops killed in a single attack since last month's suicide bombing in a military mess hall at a base near Mosul that killed 14 US service members.