SOLDIERS based at Dalton Barracks in Abingdon are leaving for a six-month tour of duty in Iraq on Friday.

Some 140 soldiers from 3 Logistic Support Regiment (3LSR) will be serving on Op Telic 10 centred at Basra International Airport, in southern Iraq.

They leave the barracks for RAF Brize Norton after being issued their allocated currency, having their documents checked, and their kits weighed.

In March, 500 troops from 4 Logistic Support Regiment (4LSR) were sent out to Afghanistan to provide support to 12 Mechanised Brigade.

More than 160 of them were stationed in Kandahar and the rest in Helmand Province.

Earlier this month, we reported how some of the Abingdon soldiers are coping in the desert tundra in Helmand, southern Afghanistan.

They have recently completed a 240-kilometre round trip re-supplying troops serving with Task Force Helmand and are due to return to Dalton Barracks in October.

The latest tour of duty to Iraq is part of the biggest deployment of troops from the barracks.

Servicemen and women from Dalton Barracks have had previous six-month tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

But this is the first time both regiments - 3LSR and 4LSR - have been posted together since the Army took over the station from the RAF in 1993.