BRITAIN must come clean about the war crimes of British soldiers in Afghanistan, anti-war campaigners said today as a public inquiry opened into accusations of summary executions by troops.

The inquiry was told that units of the SAS may have executed as many as 80 Afghans in the course of the disastrous 20-year war of occupation.

Chris Nineham of the Stop the War Coalition said: “Stop the War argued from the beginning that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan would lead to terrible suffering being unleashed on the Afghan people, we can only hope that the cover-up ends and the current inquiry faces up to the brutality of the occupation.”