Kabul, July 14: The bodies of eight British soldiers killed during the army’s bloodiest 24 hours in Afghanistan will be flown home to a military base today.
The bodies of eight British soldiers killed during the army’s bloodiest 24 hours in Afghanistan will be flown home to a military base today.
Thousands are expected to line the streets of Wootton Bassett, near RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire, to watch the men’s cortege – the largest yet to drive through the market town.
Their return comes amid renewed controversy over the resources and manpower committed to Afghanistan, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown was accused of rejecting a plea from military chiefs to send 2,000 additional troops and taking the cheaper option of a single battalion of 700 men, bringing the total UK deployment to around 9,000.
Conservative leader David Cameron yesterday challenged Mr Brown in the Commons to confirm whether defence chiefs told him they needed the 2,000 extra soldiers.
The PM responded only that he had “talked about all the options” with the military before deciding how many extra troops to send and had been reassured by commanders on the ground that “we have the manpower that we need for current operations”.
But The Times reported that all the service chiefs, backed by then Defence Secretary John Hutton, agreed that without the extra 2,000 troops it would be difficult to fulfil the Army’s objectives of taking and holding land in Helmand province and training Afghan forces.
The paper quoted an unnamed source as saying: “The Treasury put a total block on spending more money and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was against it too, so the Prime Minister went for the least expensive option.”
In an apparent concession, the PM told the Commons that a review would be held after the Afghan presidential elections in August on whether to press ahead with the previous plan to bring British force levels back down to 8,300.
He defended the Government’s resourcing of the Afghan campaign, saying that since 2006 cash made available from Treasury reserves had increased from £700 million to £3 billion, while helicopter capability had risen by 84%.
MPs are to have an opportunity to discuss operations in Afghanistan in the House of Commons on Thursday in a special debate called by the Prime Minister.
Among the servicemen being repatriated today are five soldiers from 2nd Battalion The Rifles who died near Sangin, in Helmand province on Friday, in two “daisy-chain” explosions.
Corporal Jonathan Horne, 28, and Riflemen William Aldridge, 18, James Backhouse, 18 and Joseph Murphy, 18, were rescuing comrades from an earlier blast when a second device detonated.
Rifleman Murphy was carrying rifleman Daniel Simpson, 20 – who was injured by the first makeshift bomb – when both were killed in the following explosion.
Rifleman Aldridge, from Bromyard, Herefordshire, was attempting to reach casualties from the first blast, despite being wounded himself.
Also returning on the C17 plane will be Corporal Lee Scott, 26, of 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, who died in an explosion on the same day, just north of Nad-e-Ali, during Operation Panther’s Claw.
Making up the eight are two men killed in separate incidents on Thursday. Private John Brackpool, 27, of Prince of Wales’ Company, of 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was shot at Char-e-Anjir near Lashkar Gah, while on sentry duty.
Rifleman Daniel Hume, 22, of 4th Battalion The Rifles was killed in an explosion while on a foot patrol, again near Nad-e-Ali.
The families of all the men are expected to attend a private ceremony at RAF Lyneham’s chapel after their coffins, each draped in a flag, are carried from the plane.
The hearses will then drive through Wootton Bassett three miles away, on their route to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxfordshire. Inquests into their deaths will be held in the coming weeks.
Crowds have appeared spontaneously in Wootton Bassett to pay their respects since the bodies of British service personnel started being brought back to Lyneham in 2007.
Campaigners want to rename the repatriation route The Highway of Heroes.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister said the last few weeks of fighting had been “a sad and difficult time” for Britain, but insisted it was right to press on with efforts to stop al Qaida using Afghanistan as a base for worldwide terror.
His words came after a total of 15 soldiers died in Afghanistan in 10 days, bringing the total number of UK military fatalities in the country since 2001 to 184 – surpassing the 179 who died in Iraq.
Polls on British military involvement in Afghanistan revealed conflicting results, with one suggesting three in five people think troops should be withdrawn from the country.
ITV News at Ten found 59 per cent of those asked wanted UK soldiers to come back home, while 36 per cent felt they should stay in the country.
This was in contrast to a survey carried out by ICM for The Guardian which suggested military action was supported by 46 per cent of Britons – up 15 per cent from 2006 when ICM last quizzed the public.
Some 140 extra troops from the 2nd Battalion Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, currently based in Cyprus, are being deployed to Afghanistan to assist with the ongoing offensive against the Taliban in Helmand, codenamed Operation Panther’s Claw.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “The theatre reserve battalion provides a battle-ready and fully acclimatised reserve that is routinely deployed in and out of Helmand on particular missions.
“In this instance, the commander was keen to reinforce the momentum generated by recent operations and the chain of command agreed to the request.”
–Agencies