British police said on Saturday they were assessing new information about the deaths of Princess Diana and her friend Dodi al Fayed in a Paris road crash in 1997.

London's Metropolitan Police did not elaborate on the information, or its source, but Britain's Sky news television station said it had come from the parents-in-law of a former soldier and had been passed on by the Royal Military Police.

Sky said it understood the new information included an allegation that the deaths of Diana, Dodi and their driver were caused by a member of the British military.

A royal family spokeswoman said there would be no comment.

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that it was assessing the "relevance and credibility" of information into the deaths that it had recently received.

"This is not a re-investigation and does not come under Operation Paget," it said, referring to an investigation by a former head of the Metropolitan police, John Stevens.

Diana and Dodi and their chauffeur were killed when their car crashed in a road tunnel while being pursued by photographers after the couple left the Ritz hotel in Paris on Aug 31, 1997.

The untimely death of Diana, who divorced heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles in 1996, sparked an outpouring of public grief that culminated in huge crowds lining the streets of London for her funeral.

Dodi's father, Mohammed al Fayed, the former owner of Harrods department store, alleged that the couple had been killed on the orders of the British establishment.

Stevens concluded there was no evidence of murder and said that driver Henri Paul had been drunk and was going too fast. A 2008 inquest in London returned a verdict of unlawful killing and said Paul and the photographers were to blame for the deaths.

Investigators in France have also dismissed allegations of murder, and in 2008 Mohammed al Fayed announced he was abandoning his 10-year campaign to prove the couple were killed, for the sake of Diana's sons William and Harry.

He said he had reservations about the outcome of the inquest but had had enough: "I am leaving the rest for God to get my revenge."

(China Daily 08/19/2013 page10)