TEHRAN -- A senior army commander has said that the remains of 200 people found by British troops in a barrack near Basra are those of Iranian soldiers killed in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Brigadier General Mirfeisal Baqerzadeh, the head of the Committee for Searching the Missing in Action, said that the bodies had been discovered over the recent months in joint recovery operations in Iran's Shalamcheh, and Iraq's Az-Zubair and Al-Faw.

Baqerzadeh, as IRNA reported, stressed that the remains were to be repatriated to Iran, but the repatriation did not proceed as the U.S.-led war against Iraq started.

"We eagerly ask the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to carry out its obligations and immediately take delivery of the bodies from the U.S.-British troops, and return them to Iran in Shalamcheh border point with Iraq," he said.

Baqerzadeh further said that Iran and Iraq scrapped the search and recovery operations for the missing in action on the Iraqi territory only 15 days before the war started.

British troops announced on Saturday that they had found the remains of as many as 200 people in makeshift coffins and plastic bags in an abandoned warehouse near Basra, southern Iraq, along with faded photos of corpses showing signs of torture and execution.