Washington - Muslim groups reacted angrily on Wednesday after it emerged that the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan were using rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.
The company producing the sights, which are also used to train Afghan and Iraqi soldiers under contracts with the US Army and the Marine Corps, said it has inscribed references to the New Testament on the metal casings for over two decades.
The British Ministry of Defence meanwhile announced it had placed an order for 400 of the gunsights with Trijicon but added it had not been aware of the significance of the inscriptions, in a decision criticised by the opposition Liberal Democrat party.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) called on US Defence Secretary Robert Gates to immediately withdraw from combat use equipment found to have inscriptions of Biblical references after it emerged that Trijicon has contracts to supply over 800 000 of the sights to the US military.
The Pentagon sought to defuse the brewing controversy, saying it was "disturbed" by the reports.
"If determined to be true, this is clearly inappropriate and we are looking into possible remedies," Commander Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesperson, told AFP.
The codes were used as "part of our faith and our belief in service to our country", Trijicon said