AN inquest into the death of a Hampshire soldier in Iraq earlier this month opened today.

The body of Private Eleanor Dlugosz, 19, left, from Swanmore, was flown back to Britain from the Middle East last week.

She died alongside Second Lieutenant Joanna Yorke Dyer, Corporal Kris O'Neill and Kings-man Adam James Smith along with a Kuwaiti interpreter on April 5, when insurgents blew up their Warrior vehicle near Basra.

Wiltshire coroner David Masters, sitting at Salisbury, opened and adjourned the inquest until a date to be fixed.

Pte Dlugosz, known as Ella, was in the Royal Army Medical Corps and serving with the 2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment.

Ella's mother, Sally Veck, 41, has described her daughter as her "action girl" and said nothing would have stopped her taking up her role on the front line.