While anti-war demonstrations were staged across the country, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's second son, attended a ceremony to mark the return of 10 dead soldiers at a Royal Air Force base in Brize Norton, western England.

A C-17 military cargo aircraft carrying their bodies touched down at the base just after midday (1200 GMT).

With an air force flag flying at half mast, a Royal Marines band played as each coffin was solemnly brought from the aircraft to a waiting hearse before being driven to a temporary mortuary.

Blair's official spokesman later said that the whole country was "immensely proud" of the servicemen "who died with great honour."

Eight of the returning dead British soldiers were killed when the US Sea Knight helicopter they were aboard crashed south of the Kuwaiti border on March 21, the day after the war started.

The other two bodies were those of the crew of the British GR4 Tornado warplane which was hit near the Kuwaiti border by a US Patriot missile on March 23.

According to official figures, 23 British soldiers have been killed in total since the start of the US-led war -- 14 in helicopter accidents, four in combat, and five as a result of "friendly fire".

In London, the defence ministry said it had apologised to the families of two soldiers after Blair, Washington's staunchest ally in the US-led war, publicly denounced their "execution" by Iraqi forces before the men's relatives had been told.

Blair made his remark during a press conference after a summit with US President George W. Bush Thursday at Camp David near Washington.

But the family of one of the dead soldiers accused the prime minister of "lying".

The sister of sapper Luke Allsopp told the Daily Mirror tabloid that officers from his barracks told her he had died on the spot in battle.

At a news conference in London Friday, armed forces minister Adam Ingram expressed "regret" for any distress that had been caused, while acknowledging that it had not formally been established that the soldiers were executed.

Meanwhile, a former British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who resigned from the government in opposition to war with Iraq, has demanded that Britain's troops return from the battlefield.

"I have already had my fill of this bloody and unjust war," Cook wrote in the mass-circulation newspaper the Sunday Mirror. His article was released in advance of publication.

"I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed," said Cook, who resigned as Leader of the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, on March 17, three days before Britain went to war alongside the United States.

Cook, foreign secretary between 1997 and 2001, stepped down because he could not accept responsibility for British involvement in Iraq without international backing.

Britain's main anti-war group, the Stop The War Coalition, an umbrella body for some 300 organisations, said protest marches against the conflict were staged in at least 20 cities as a way of "expressing mounting anger at the news of the rising civilian casualties".

In Edinburgh, organisers said that at least 10,000 people marched through the city centre -- while police put the figure at between 4,000 and 5,000.

A police spokeswoman told AFP that 23 separate demonstrations took place in London, with up to 10,000 people taking part in total. The protests were peaceful and no arrests were made, the spokeswoman added.

Police in Wales said that between 400 and 500 people turned out in Cardiff for a city-centre rally.

WAR.WIRE