LONDON — British prosecutors said Tuesday they will charge eight journalists with illegally eavesdropping on voice mail, including a former aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron and a close confidant of media baron Rupert Murdoch.

Cameron’s former director of communications Andy Coulson is among eight journalists facing charges, as is Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Murdoch’s News International.

The names of the suspected hacking victims announced by the Crown Prosecution Service include some of the world’s biggest celebrities, including Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Paul McCartney, soccer star Wayne Rooney and actor Jude Law.

Coulson and Brooks are former editors of the defunct Murdoch tabloid the News of the World, which was shut down last year in the face of public outrage at the hacking scandal.

Brooks, who will be charged with conspiracy to intercept voice mails of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, vigorously denied the charges, saying she was “distressed and angry.”

“The charge concerning Milly Dowler is particularly upsetting not only as it is untrue but also because I have spent my journalistic career campaigning for victims of crime,” she said in a statement released by her lawyers.

Cameron’s office and News International declined to comment, as did McCartney and a number of other celebrities named as potential victims.

Six other journalists were charged, Alison Levitt of the Crown Prosecution Service announced, while three will not be prosecuted. The CPS is still waiting to decide about two other cases, she said.

The journalists facing charges include former top News of the World staff, including former managing editor Stuart Kuttner, editor Ian Edmonson and chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck.

Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who is suspected of carrying out the hacking, is also among the eight.

Prosecutors allege there were more than 600 victims of phone hacking between 2000 and 2006.

Coulson resigned as editor after an earlier round of the phone-hacking scandal involving the paper’s royal correspondent Clive Goodman and private investigator Mulcaire.

They were sent to prison for hacking into the voice mails of staffers working for Prince William and Prince Harry. Coulson said he knew nothing about the hacking but resigned because he was editor of the paper at the time.

He was later hired to be communications director for David Cameron, a move which Cameron’s critics say was bad judgment on his part.

Coulson quit the post in Cameron’s office last year when police opened a new investigation into phone hacking after accusations that it went far beyond Goodman and Mulcaire.

Brooks went on to become chief executive of News International after her time at News of the World and is seen as personally close to Murdoch. She quit News International, the British newspaper publishing arm of News Corp., amid the scandal last summer.

Murdoch recently resigned from a number of positions within News Corp., his global media empire, as the company began moves to separate its entertainment and publishing arms following the scandal.

British police have been investigating phone-hacking by people working for Murdoch since January 2011 and have arrested dozens on suspicion of phone hacking, computer hacking and corruption.

The scandal exploded with the revelation that one of the hacking victims was Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old British girl whose phone was hacked after she disappeared in 2002. She was later found murdered.

The Met Police continues to investigate claims of phone hacking in their probe known as Operation Weeting.

A parallel police operation is investigating claims of inappropriate payments to police and public officials.

Cameron established a separate independent judge-led inquiry into media ethics, the Leveson Inquiry, following the news of the hacking of Milly Dowler’s voice messages.

Cameron, as well as other senior current and former government figures, have been called to testify before the inquiry, as have Murdoch and Brooks.

Dowler’s parents told the inquiry in November how phone hacking on behalf of News of the World had given them false hope their missing daughter was still alive.

In fact, the messages had been accessed by a private investigator working for News of the World, Dowler’s father, Bob, told the inquiry panel. The young girl had already been murdered.

— CNN’s Dan Rivers, Jonathan Wald and Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.