A British Iraq war veteran has died after he was given a pair of cancerous lungs donated by a smoker as part of a lung transplant.

Matthew Millington, 31, a corporal in the Queen's Royal Lancers, needed the transplant because he had an incurable lung condition.

But he ended up with cancer after the organs donated to him came from someone who smoked 30 to 50 cigarettes a day, the Daily Mail said.

He died in February last year. At an inquest, Coroner Ian Smith said he had died from "complications of transplant surgery".

His widow Siobhan said: "All he wanted was another set of lungs. He said 'they've given me a dud pair',"

Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, which performed the transplant, said early X-rays did not find any sign of cancer in Mr Millington's lungs, the Mail said.

But the tumour had been missed.

Drugs given to Mr Millington to help his body accept the new organs sped up the spread of the tumour, it said.

The hospital defended its use of smokers' lungs in transplants and said all organs were screened rigorously, the Mail said.

Mr Millington had served in the army since he was 16, but started to struggle with his breathing while in Iraq in 2005.

A year later he was told he would die in two years unless he had a transplant.