Iran releases Iraqi POWs

About 700 prisoners will be allowed to return to Iraq

Tehran has released nearly 200 Iraqi military prisoners whom it had been holding for more than a decade - the first of a group of 697 it has promised to return to Iraq.

There were emotional scenes of reunion as the former prisoners were embraced by their relatives at the border crossing of Al-Mundhariya, 160 miles north-east of Baghdad.

One million Iraqis and Iranians are believed to have died in the war

Iranian officials said the men were Iraqi troops arrested on the Iranian border in 1991. A Red Cross spokeswoman said they had been seized in "chaos" of the Gulf War.

The other 500 prisoners due to be released were captured during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war.

An Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman said the two sides would also exchange the bodies of 1,183 Iraqis and 574 Iranians who had died in prison.

Baghdad has meanwhile released 50 Iranians which it said were not POWs but had been imprisoned for financial crimes or for staying in the country illegally.

How many?

One million Iranians and Iraqis are estimated to have been killed during the eight-year war, with many thousands of prisoners captured on both sides.

The BBC's Middle East correspondent says the POWs remain a major obstacle to normalising relations between Iran-Iraq.

The handover of prisoners was the first since 2000, and was agreed during the visit of an Iranian delegation to Baghdad.

But both sides still disagree on how many prisoners the other side holds.

Tehran has repeatedly denied Baghdad's charges that it is holding some 29,000 Iraqi prisoners. Iraq says another 60,000 are still missing.

Iran accuses Iraq of holding about 3,000 of its soldiers, but Baghdad denies holding any Iranian POWs.