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Caroline Overington, The Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in New York writes:

Last Sunday a newspaper in Seattle, Washington, published a rare photograph of soldiers’ coffins, each of them containing the body of an American who had died in Iraq.

The coffins, each draped with the Stars and Stripes, had been loaded into the back of a cargo aircraft for a final journey to the US, where they would be buried. There were at least 18 of them in the picture, which was taken by a 50-year-old civilian contractor, Tami Silicio.

On Wednesday Ms Silicio was sacked from her job, for taking the photograph and sharing it with news organisations.

Ms Silicio worked for Maytag Aircraft Corporation, which has a $US18 million ($25 million) contract to handle cargo for the US Government at Kuwait airport.

As part of that job she would often see soldiers’ coffins in the back of aircraft, on their way from Iraq to burial in the US.

Earlier this month - which has been one of the deadliest for coalition soldiers - Ms Silicio decided to photograph the coffins. She asked a friend, Amy Katz, to forward the image to her local newspaper, The Seattle Times.

Ms Katz said she was “amazed” when she saw the photo. “I immediately picked up the telephone and because [Ms Silicio] is from Washington state, I called The Seattle Times,” she said. “Tami wanted to share the image with the American people.”

The US military generally bans photographs of soldiers’ coffins, and few have been published in US newspapers during the war in Iraq. On Wednesday Ms Silicio engaged an agent, who offered her photograph to newspaper outlets for $1400 for one-time, non-exclusive use.

The editor of the Times, Mike Fancher, said in a column this week that he decided to publish the photograph on the front page because it was “undeniably newsworthy”. Readers would have “differing reactions to the photo, depending on their views of the war”, he said.

The managing editor of The Seattle Times, David Boardman, told the magazine Editor & Publisher this week that “we weren’t attempting to convey any sort of political message”.

He disagreed with the military ban on photographs of coffins, saying: “The Administration cannot tell us what we can and cannot publish.”

Ms Katz said that after the picture was published Ms Silicio was “called into her supervisor’s office and severely reprimanded. She explained why she did it, but they sacked her and her husband [David Landry] too”. She said Ms Silicio “really wanted mothers of the soldiers to know how the coffins were handled”.

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Ms Silicio said the coffins were prayed over and saluted before being shipped.

“Everyone salutes with such emotion and respect,” she said. “The families would be proud to see their sons and daughters saluted like that.”

She said she had seen a coffin accompanied by the wife and, in another case, by the father of the fallen soldier.

William Silva, the president of Maytag Aircraft, was quoted by The Seattle Times as saying the sackings had been for violating US government and company regulations.

Copyright 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald.