LONDON - The Observer newspaper said on Sunday that brutal scenes of Algerian army conscripts being killed were being distributed on video in Britain's mosques as part of a radical Muslim recruitment drive.

It said the video, titled simply 'Algeria', contained footage of an attack on an Algerian government convoy, showed mutilated corpses and repeatedly used shots of a wounded conscript having his throat cut.

The Observer's chief reporter Jason Burke told Reuters he had obtained the video from a long-standing contact in Britain's Muslim community who had told him it was circulating around mosques in London and was being sold for around 10 pounds.

"We have been told by our contacts in the Algerian community that the video has been used as part of a widespread recruiting drive by Algerian extremist groups linked to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network," Burke said.

"The text that accompanies what are truly horrendous pictures is a clear incitement to extreme violence," Burke said.

The paper said the video was annotated with Arabic script with injunctions such as" "Fight them until the sentence of God is carried out on Earth", and "You have to kill in the name of Allah until you are killed".

It also shows more mundane aspects of everyday life among the radical Salafist Group for Preaching and Fighting (GSPC).

London's Metropolitan Police said in answer to a Reuters query: "If the Observer wishes to take this video to a police station, then police will be only too interested in taking a look at it, as with anything that may have criminal images on it."

The spokeswoman said police would then determine whether the distribution of the video broke any laws. - Nampa-Reuters