KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) – Four US soldiers face disciplinary action for burning the bodies of two Taliban rebels, but they will not be prosecuted because their actions were motivated by hygienic concerns, the military said yesterday after an inquiry into a videotaped incident that sparked outrage in Afghanistan.

TV footage recorded on October 1 in a violent part of southern Afghanistan showed US soldiers setting fire to the bodies and then later boasting about the act on loudspeakers to taunt insurgents suspected to be hiding in a nearby village.

Islam bans cremation, and the video images were compared here to photographs of US troops abusing prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Afghanistan’s government condemned the incident and Muslim clerics warned of a possible violent anti-American backlash, though there have been no protests so far.

American commanders immediately launched an inquiry and vowed that anyone found guilty would be severely punished, fearing it could undermine public support for the war against a stubborn insurgency four years after US-led forces ousted the Taliban.

The US-led coalition’s operational commander, Maj Gen Jason Kamiya, said two junior officers who ordered the bodies burned would be officially reprimanded for showing a lack of cultural and religious understanding, but he said the men were unaware that what they were doing was wrong.

Kamiya also said two noncommissioned officers would be reprimanded for using the burning of the bodies to taunt the rebels. The two men also would face nonjudicial punishments, which could include a loss of pay or demotion in rank.

“Our investigation found there was no intent to desecrate the remains, but only to dispose of them for hygienic reasons,” Kamiya said.

He added that the broadcasts about the burned remains, while “designed to incite fleeing Taliban to fight,” violated military policy.

Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid, who attended the military’s news conference in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, said, “We have confidence in this investigation.”

But Islamic clerics criticised the findings.

“These soldiers should be severely punished,” said Khair Mohammed, a senior cleric in Kandahar. “Foreign soldiers in Afghanistan must respect our religion. If they continue to do things like this, every Muslim will be against them.”

A Taliban commander in Shah Wali Kot district, where the bodies were burned, said he was “outraged the Americans burned the bodies of our dead.”

“The Americans always claimed to respect human rights, our culture and religion, but now the whole world knows that these are all lies,” he told The Associated Press by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.

The footage shows about five soldiers in light-coloured military fatigues, which did not have any distinguishing marks, standing near a bonfire in which two bodies were laid side by side.

Kamiya said the temperature at the time was 33ºC (90ºF), and the bodies had lain exposed on the ground for 24 hours and were rapidly decomposing.

“This posed an increasing health concern for our soldiers,” Kamiya said. “The criminal investigation proved there was no violation of the rules of war.”

The Geneva Convention forbids the burning of combatants except for hygienic purposes.

The bodies were found atop a hill following a firefight, and Kamiya said soldiers, intending to stay on the hill for two or three days for strategic reasons, believed other Taliban had fled into the village below.

Freelance journalist Stephen Dupont, who shot the footage, said he took it while embedded with the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade.