WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. contractor and her husband have been fired after her photograph of 20 flag-draped coffins of U.S. soldiers going home from Iraq was published in violation of military rules.

"I lost my job and they let my husband go as well," Tami Silicio, who loaded U.S. military cargo at Kuwait International Airport for a U.S. company, told Reuters in an e-mail response to questions.

The Pentagon tightly restricts publication of photographs of coffins with the remains of U.S. soldiers and has forbidden journalists from taking pictures at Dover Air Force Base, the first stop for the bodies of U.S. soldiers being sent home.

The military says the policy is in place to protect the privacy of families of those killed, but critics have said the rules are aimed at sanitizing the war for the public.

The Seattle Times printed Silicio's photograph last weekend and again on Thursday. The picture shows soldiers tending to 20 coffins completely covered with American flags on April 7 inside a military cargo plane at the Kuwait airport.

Silicio, who was raised in the Seattle area, was not paid by the newspaper for the picture, which a friend in the United States, Amy Katz, passed on to the newspaper. Katz said she had since found an agent to sell the photograph.

STRICT POLICY

Silicio's former employer, Colorado-based Maytag Aircraft Corp., a subsidiary of Mercury Air Group Inc. (MAX.A, said the couple was dismissed for violating U.S. government and company regulations.

"Maytag deeply regrets these actions and fully concurs with the Pentagon's policy of respecting the remains of our brave men and women who have fallen in service to our country," said Maytag President William Silva.

The Pentagon has declined to comment on Silicio's case but spokesman James Turner said the policy of media coverage of war dead has been in effect since 1991.

"The principal focus and purpose of the policy is to protect the wishes and the privacy of the families during their time of greatest loss and grief," he said.

Katz said Silicio, whose own son died from an illness, took the picture to show the "respectful death ritual" for slain soldiers and not to make money or become famous. Other contractors and soldiers had taken similar pictures, she said.

Katz said her friend believed she was in Kuwait to "stand in for the parents who can't be here for the living and the fallen."

"Tami Silicio was only pledging allegiance to our flag and to our heroes laying beneath it," she said.

Violence has escalated over the past month in Iraq and the death toll among U.S. soldiers has risen quickly. Since the start of the war in March last year, more than 700 U.S. troops died in Iraq, Pentagon figures show. More than 100 have been killed this month alone.

The Seattle Times stood by its decision to use the photograph. Managing Editor David Boardman said it was unfortunate Silicio was fired but she was aware of the consequences when the picture was published.