Kabul, April 21: A British servicewoman working in a bomb disposal team in the province of Helmand in Afghanistan has been killed, British Defense Ministry says.
Captain Lisa Head, 29, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire has been voluntarily working as a specialist in the clearance of improvised explosive devises (IEDs) in the last month, the Guardian reported.
She reportedly died on Wednesday, two days after she sustained severe injuries in Hemand’s Nahr-e Saraj district and taken to hospital for operation.
“(She) was neutralizing a complex set of IEDs which had been sown in an alleyway between two compounds when one of the devices detonated,” Lt. Col. Purbrick, the spokesman for Task Force Helmand said on Monday.
Head is the second female British soldier to have been killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of the US-led war in Afghanistan in 2001.
Sarah Bryant, 26, was the first female UK soldier who lost her life in Afghanistan. Bryant, a military intelligence soldier, was killed in 2008 in a bomb blast in Lashkar Gah, also in Helmand province.
Head’s death raises the British military death toll in Afghanistan to 364, state-run BBC reported.
Roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices are by far the most lethal weapon Taliban militants have used against foreign troops and Afghan forces as well as civilians.
The year 2010 was the deadliest for the US-led foreign military forces deployed in war-wrecked Afghanistan, with a death toll of over 710.
——–Agencies