The Pentagon has started a criminal investigation into allegations that US soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The soldiers used the charred and smoking corpses as part of a propaganda campaign against the insurgents, said the newspaper.

The incident was revealed by an Australian TV program aired Wednesday, which showed a US psychological operation team using the corpses of two Taliban fighters to scare an Afghan village which was thought to be harboring Taliban fighters.

In the TV footage, a US soldier identified as Jim Baker told villagers: "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

After the broadcast, the Pentagon said such acts are forbidden and an investigation is underway.

Some senior US officials said preliminary indications suggested that what the TV program reported is accurate and the incident could do further harm in the Islamic world to the image of the United States, which has already been tarnished by prisoner abuse scandals.

A statement from the US Central Command which leads the US military operations in Afghanistan said "desecration, abuse or inappropriate treatment of enemy combatants" are never condoned and it violates the US policy and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of enemy remains in wartime.

(Xinhua News Agency October 21, 2005)