Bloomberg, July 31: British forces in Afghanistan suffered more casualties in the first two weeks of July than in any month since the war began in 2001, government figures show. Fifty-seven British troops were wounded in action between July 1 and July 15, compared with 46 in June and 24 in May, the Ministry of Defence said today. There were 16 serious injuries.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been under pressure over the war in Afghanistan after 22 British service personnel were killed this month, taking the toll since operations began in 2001 to 191. That’s more than the number who died in six years of fighting in Iraq.
Surgeon Rear Admiral Lionel Jarvis, assistant chief of the defense staff in charge of health, said British surgeons in Afghanistan had been overwhelmed by the number of casualties and had received backup from American surgical colleagues.
“As a result partially of the exhaustion of the surgeons and the very long hours that they were working, in theater we talked to our coalition colleagues and a surgical team from one of the U.S. facilities has moved temporarily down to reinforce the facility in Bastion,” he told reporters in London today.
Colonel Peter Mahoney, who has just returned from a deployment as medical director responsible for clinical care at Camp Bastion, a British post in the southern province of Helmand, said surgical teams had been “working constantly” at times. “We had pulses of activity depending on what’s going on, on the ground,” he said.
Brown announced July 27 that the offensive stage of Operation Panther’s Claw is over, declaring the British effort to improve security for presidential elections on August 20 a success.
‘Tragic Losses’
British army chief Richard Dannatt said the battle to beat the Taliban, the radical Islamist movement ousted by U.S.-led forces after the Sept. 11 attacks, is working.
“We are succeeding in spite of the tragic losses that we have suffered,” Dannatt told an audience of academics in London today in his last public speech before he retires.
“There is still a long way to go,” he said. “We should be under no illusion. We are at war and if we want to succeed, which we must, we must get on to a war-like footing.”
–Agencies