Speaking to reporters in London, Hoon said he had "some developing ideas" as to what exactly happened to the slain Royal Military Police soldiers, and that investigations were still underway.

But he added: "I think, certainly, that the fact that we have decided to call off (weapons) searches on Monday clearly hadn't been properly understood by the local population, and not communicated properly to them."

He added that he was concerned that Iraqis had not understood that British soldiers were prepared to use plastic baton rounds -- but not live ammunition -- for crowd control.

Such practices, he said, might need "greater explanation".

The six soldiers were killed Tuesday in Al-Majar Al-Kabir, a Shiite town in British-controlled southern Iraq, about mid-way between Baghdad and Iraq's second city of Basra.

They were the first British troops to die in a hostile incident since US President George W. Bush declared the Iraq war over on May 1.

Earlier Thursday, Hoon told a conference at the Royal United Services Institute that the killings demonstrated the dangers that the 10,000 British troops inside Iraq still face.

"The tragic losses suffered by our armed forces on Tuesday in Iraq remind us of the risks and dangers they face, and the huge debt of gratitude which we owe to them," the defence minister said.

Speaking to BBC radio from Baghdad, Britain's International Development Secretary Valerie Amos said the soldiers' death was evidence that peace was far from being achieved in Iraq.

"There are undoubtedly problems. Without getting the security environment right, it's going to be very difficult indeed to deal with all the other issues of concern," Baroness Amos said.

"As soon as we fix the electricity or the water, it is looted or sabotaged overnight, because there are forces here that don't want the coalition effort to succeed," she said.

On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said military commanders had told him that the 14,000 troops currently in the Gulf region -- including the 10,000 in Iraq -- were sufficient.

But he told parliament: "Should they require more troops, of course we will make sure that those troops are available."

WAR.WIRE