LONDON, Nov. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- A newspaper on Sunday published video footage of what appears to be images of recruits of the Royal Marines stripped naked and being forced to fight each other.

    The News of the World newspaper said the video was secretly taken by a marine in May at Bickleigh Barracks near Plymouth in southern England, the base of the 42 Commando unit.

    The blurred footage, which was aired later on several British news channels, shows naked recruits fighting in a field with bare fists and a non-commissioned officer in a blue surgeon's outfit overseeing the fighting and kicking a recruit in the face.

    "This is the worst thing that I've seen happen -- that's why I filmed it -- but it's the tip of an iceberg," the newspaper quoted the marine as saying.

    The source said recruits were subjected to electric shocks, forced to crawl naked through thornbushes, and forced to fight one another.

    After the exposure, Britain's Ministry of Defense said an investigation had been launched by the Royal Military Police's Special Investigations Board on the alleged bullying.

    "The Royal Marines take these allegations extremely seriously and have a zero tolerance policy on bullying and harassment," said the ministry in a statement.

    "Bullying and harassment is not widespread within the armed forces. Behavior of this kind will not be tolerated and every effort is made to apply this policy rigorously," it added.

    A similar inquiry was launched after four recruits died from bullet wounds at the Deepcut barracks in southern England between 1995 and 2002.

    Army investigations found they had all committed suicide, but some of the recruits' families questioned the finding as one of the dead soldiers was shot five times. They demanded an investigation into what they described as a culture of bullying at the base.

    The Royal Marines are the amphibious infantry of the elite Royal Navy and have joined military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Enditem