A British Army veteran who cleared IEDs in Syria has been reunited with the stray dog he found cowering in the rubble of Raqqa after the four-month battle to liberate the city from Isil.

Sean Laidlaw, 30, a former lance corporal in the Royal Engineers, found Barrie, an Asian Shepherd cross puppy, in February 2018 when he was working as a private contractor removing unexploded ordnance and booby traps for the US State Department.

Mr Laidlaw, from Hornchurch in Essex, has now been reunited with Barrie after seven months apart thanks to the efforts of a military charity which arranged for the dog to be brought 3,000 miles to the UK earlier this month.

“Meeting her at the airport, seeing her in the flesh, was one of the best moments of my life. I've never been so happy,” he said.

The former soldier, who now runs a gym, found Barrie alongside four dead puppies after hearing whimpering under a slab of concrete. She was nestled in rubble from a school that had exploded and collapsed.