London, March 05: The families of British soldiers slain in Iraq are demanding that the Iraq war inquiry question Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the inadequate funding of troop deployments, linked to high fatalities.
Brown will face the inquiry into the British role in the build up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq on Friday as the most senior official to be questioned by the committees.
Jocelyn Cockburn, a lawyer representing bereaved families of soldiers killed in light armored vehicles, told The Times daily on Thursday that the Iraq Inquiry needed to grill Brown on army budget cuts and failing to replace the unsuitable Snatch Land Rover trucks.
In a letter to the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, Cockburn urged him to focus on whether the premier, then the finance minister, knew about the shortages and a dire need for more helicopters.
She has also demanded an explanation over the government’s disregard for complaints by frontline troops regarding the equipment, especially the trucks.
This is while a sole survivor of a Taliban roadside bombing that killed several of his comrades told a separate inquiry that the trucks were “not adequate for the job.”
The inquiry has been launched to probe the death of several soldiers in Afghanistan who were all using Snatch Land Rover vehicles, including the British army’s first female fatality in the war-torn country.
——-Agencies