Afghanistan: eight soldiers die in one day
Daily Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk
10th July 2009
Eight British soldiers have been killed in 24 hours in Afghanistan, on what was the single bloodiest day for front line combat troops since the Falklands conflict. Five troops died in an ambush when they were hit by a "massive explosion", and three others were killed in separate incidents involving the Taliban.

Fifteen British service personnel have now died in Afghanistan in the last 10 days. The deaths bring the British toll in Afghanistan to 184, five more than the total killed in Iraq during the six years that British forces operated there.

News of the latest casualties came at the end of a week in which Britain's eight-year military mission in Afghanistan faced greater scepticism than ever before.

On Thursday, the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, broke the cross-party consensus of support for the conflict in an article in The Daily Telegraph. He said that lives were being "thrown away" in Afghanistan. Yesterday, General Lord Guthrie, a former chief of the defence staff, said that Gordon Brown, as Chancellor and then Prime Minister, had taken an "unsympathetic view" of defence and ministers had spent "the minimum they could get away with".

Michael Portillo, a former defence secretary, also waded into the row. "There has always been a mismatch between the objectives set for our troops and political willpower. The politicians have never committed enough troops or enough equipment to the fight," he said.

Mr Brown is under growing pressure over Labour's support for the military and his decision, earlier this year, to veto an enlargement of the British deployment by 1,500 troops. The additional cost of the reinforcement was the decisive factor, officials said.

Former battlefield commanders said casualties had increased because a lack of properly-armoured vehicles and transport helicopters had forced troops to travel overland and exposed them to the threat of roadside bombs.In an emotional statement at the G8 summit in Italy yesterday, Mr Brown insisted that Britain would not change its strategy.

"We knew from the start that defeating the insurgency in Helmand would be a hard and dangerous job, but it is a vital one," he said.

"Our resolve to complete the work we have started in Afghanistan and Pakistan is undiminished." He also said there would be more casualties. This is a very hard summer. It is not over." Three weeks ago, British commanders launched Operation Panther's Claw, a major offensive to seize and hold areas north of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, ahead of the presidential elections in August.

Since the offensive began, casualties have mounted steadily. The first grim milestone was the death of Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe, the highest ranking British soldier to be killed since the Falklands conflict. This morning, as the bodies of five more servicemen were flown home, it was announced that two more soldiers had died.

One was from 4th Battalion The Rifles. He was killed in a blast while on foot patrol near Nad Ali in central Helmand province.

The second, from The Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, attached to 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was killed during an engagement with insurgents near Lashkar Gah on Thursday evening. It was later confirmed that a soldier from 2nd Royal Tank Regiment had been killed near Nad Ali that morning. It then emerged that five more soldiers from 2nd Battalion, The Rifles, had died in a bomb explosion in Sangin.

Military sources said that the men had avoided one explosion from a makeshift bomb when they were "ambushed and caught up in a second, massive explosion".

The families of two of the five have been informed. The Ministry of Defence hoped to inform the families of the remaining three over night.

Military experts said the death of eight soldiers was the largest single number of fatalities in a 24-hour period among troops on the ground since the Falklands conflict. More have lost their lives in single incidents but only when they were airborne. A senior commander said that despite the casualties the offensive had reached the "tipping point" with enemy resistance beginning to falter.

"Morale is still good. When a platoon takes casualties the rest have to pick up their kit and go forward and that takes an enormous inner strength," said Lt Col Simon Banton.