Nine British soldiers were acquitted of trashing a pub and beating up its owner during a mass bar brawl in the Cyprus party town of Ayia Napa.

The servicemen, facing up to five years in jail, had been celebrating finishing tours of Iraq and Afghanistan and coming home to the UK, when trouble broke out at the Bedrock Inn on February 2.

At Famagusta District Court, Judge Elias Georgiou delivered not guilty verdicts against all nine soldiers from the 2nd Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

Bottles, tables and chairs flew as soldiers clashed with locals, leaving four people needing hospital treatment.

Fusilier William Sewell, 21, from Manchester, was cleared of grievous bodily harm, malicious damage and breach of the peace.

Fusiliers David Ramage, 21, from Manchester, and Daniel Brayne, 22, from Birmingham, were cleared of charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm along with malicious damage and breach of the peace.

Fusiliers Damien Heywood, 27, Andy Evans, 21, and Dean Rushton, 21, all from Manchester, Gary Farrell, 23, from Newcastle upon Tyne, Christopher Wenham, 19, from London, and Ashley Hughes, 19, from Birmingham, were all acquitted of malicious damage and breach of the peace.

The soldiers were all "out of bounds" as service personnel have been banned from the centre of the town because of previous trouble.

There have been simmering tensions between British soldiers and locals for some time in Ayia Napa. The court was not told what sparked the trouble on the night.

But it appears one soldier was attacked, possibly with a baseball bat, by a local at, or near, the Bedrock Inn. Soldiers then stormed the bar to "back up" fellow servicemen - and possibly to find the culprits.

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