US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has condemned photographs that appeared in an American newspaper showing US soldiers posing with the maimed bodies of Afghan insurgents, and he said an investigation is already underway.

The Defense Secretary also said he regretted the decision of the Los Angeles Times to publish some of the photos, which he said might trigger retaliatory violence against foreign soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.

Leon Panetta said, "This is war, and I know war is ugly, and is violent. And I know that young people sometimes caught up in the moment make some very foolish decisions. I am not excusing that, I am not excusing there behaviour. But neither do I want those images to bring further injury to our people or to our relationship with the Afghan people. We had urged the LA times not to run those photos, and the reason for that is those kind of photos are used by the enemy to incite violence, and lives have been lost as a result of the publication of similar photos in the past and we regret that they were published."

(CNTV April 20, 2012)