By Daniel McGrory and Russell Jenkins
On his website, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, likes to boast about the British recruits who have joined his "foreign legion".
At least eight Britons have died there since the insurgency began, including three killed in suicide attacks on coalition troops.
Up to forty more "British jihadis" are reported to have travelled to Iraq, though their whereabouts are unclear. Europol, the European law enforcement agency, revealed yesterday how the main terror activity they are tracking in the EU is support for Islamic terrorists operating inside Iraq.
Many of the latest al-Qaeda recruits include European-born Islamic converts.
This month the head of France's domestic security service, Pierre de Bousquet, said that about 15 young French people remained in and around Iraq. At least nine have been killed.
Since the US-led invasion in March 2003, hundreds of jihadist volunteers from almost every country in Europe have travelled to Iraq, via Syria, Egypt, Turkey or Iran.
Last year the renowned International Institute for Strategic Studies in London estimated the number of foreign volunteers in Iraq to be at least one thousand.
While most of those killed in suicide car-bomb attacks have come from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, the numbers arriving from Europe is on the increase as Iraq becomes the international focus for militant jihadis, both men and women.
Muriel Degauque, 20, a white Belgian convert, stunned family and friends when, in November 2005, she blew herself up in an attack on an Iraqi police patrol in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing six people.
Militant groups have broadcast footage of some of their alleged recruits from Britain dying in suicide attacks.
Wail al-Dhaleai, a Yemeni asylum-seeker living in Sheffield, died when he drove a car filled with explosives into a US army patrol in November 2003.
According to a rebel commander, at least two Britons have been killed in the past year. He said: "They could not wait to go out and fight and kept on asking when they would go into battle."
