Serviceman's death ruled 'unlawful'

Sergeant Duane Barwood, 41, from Carterton, Oxfordshire, of 903 Expeditionary Air Wing, died on February 29 this year at the Contingency Operating Base in Basra.

He was in a toilet block near the Trenchard Lines accommodation area when the projectile packed with 2.2lb (1kg) of explosives hit a wall 20ft (6m) away, sending metal fragments flying out, the Oxford inquest was told. He died after being struck in the chest.

Coroner Andrew Walker, recording a verdict of unlawful killing, said: "What makes this all the more tragic is that, had the appropriate buildings been started five years ago, as they should have, this loss of life could have been avoided.

"There was a failure to provide appropriate protective buildings for the area of the base where Sgt Barwood died."

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Voase, of the Royal Engineers, in charge of constructing defences at the Coalition Operating Base at the time, said the toilet block in question had been earmarked a week before the tragedy as needing additional concrete protection walls to guard it in the event of a blast.

"It was identified, ironically and tragically, a week before this occurred," he told the hearing.

He said that, when the base was being set up in 2003/04, such protective measures were not considered, as back then, unlike now, there was little or no threat from indirect fire.

The inquest heard how the protective walls are designed to stop fragments blasting upwards from ground-exploding missiles. With this one having exploded on the top of a wall, the fragments spread across and downwards, suggesting, in Col Voase's view, that Sgt Barwood would still have been at risk even with a wall in place.

The coroner said that, regardless, the protective structures should have been built years ago. The family left the hearing without commenting.