Houston, Sep 22 (IANS): A female officer has taken over the basic training unit of a US Air Force base in Texas after a widening sex scandal involving more than a dozen male instructors and more than 40 female recruits.

Deborah Liddick Friday became the commander of the 737th Training Group at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, where she will be in charge of training about 35,000 new recruits each year, reported Xinhua citing media reports.

The appointment was in response to recent allegations of a number of sexual assaults at Lackland, where more than 40 female recruits have alleged they were sexually assaulted or harassed by male instructors within the past year.

Six male instructors at Lackland have been charged with crimes ranging from adultery to rape, and four of them have been convicted. Other instructors are still under investigation.

Lackland Air Force base is one of the country's busiest military training centres. Most instructors at the base are males and a quarter of the recruits they trained are women.