Two British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in the last 24 hours, both of them dying in the town of Babaji in Helmand where only 150 Afghans voted in the election on August 20.
Babaji, north of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, was the focus of the five-week offensive, Operation Panther’s Claw, involving 3,000 British soldiers, aimed at clearing the former Taleban stronghold town of insurgents to make it safe for voters to go to the polls. Ten British soldiers died in the operation.
Today a soldier from the 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment, serving with The Light Dragoons battle group, died of gunshot wounds after a Taleban insurgent sprayed a foot patrol with rounds from a Kalashnikov while it was going through Babaji.
The day before, a soldier from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) in the Babaji district. Also serving with The Light Dragoons battle group, he was in a vehicle which was targeted by an IED.
The latest two deaths bring the total number of fatalities since 2001 to 212 - all but five of them since 2006.
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Eighty-three per cent of the 75 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year have died from roadside bomb explosions - the worst casualty figures since the campaign in southern Afghanistan began in 2006.
The Task Force now in Helmand, consisting of troops from 19 Light Brigade (the Black Panthers), largely based in Northern Ireland, has suffered the worst number of fatalities and wounded of all the brigades sent to southern Afghanistan in the last three years.
Since April when the brigade first deployed, 60 soldiers have been killed and more than 208 have been wounded in action.
The threat from roadside bombs in Afghanistan is so overwhelming that the Army has restructured its recruit training programme to ensure every soldier becomes an expert in IEDs.
The change to the Army’s “phase-one” training to include IED instruction was ordered after the Taleban switched from conventional assaults to asymmetric warfare, using IEDs and mines to target British troops.
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The Taleban have shown they are capable of adapting techniques and tactics to pose a rising threat to British soldiers on foot and vehicle patrol in Helmand.
Defence officials said the Taleban had switched to laying “industrial-scale minefields” and that it was important that every member of the Army learnt about the techniques for detecting the devices.
The phase-one training programme which follows basic training now has IED know-how as one of the key elements of the syllabus. Further instruction is later provided for all troops earmarked for a tour of Afghanistan during the three months of pre-deployment preparation.
Countering the Taleban’s IED campaign has become the priority mission for military commanders in Helmand. Brigadier Tim Radford, commander of 19 Light Brigade, has revealed that his soldiers have dealt with about 1,300 IEDs during the summer months.
He described the bombs as “by far the most prevalent threat that my soldiers face”.
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“We have specialist counter-IED teams out on the ground working in extremely tough conditions to deal with the threat,” he said.
Defence officials said there was no evidence at this stage that “outsiders” were involved in the manufacture of the roadside bombs. The Taleban were still using basic artillery shells or oil drums as containers, filling them with homemade explosives, and attaching pressure-plates to effect detonation.
However, the insurgents had learnt how to overcome technological and tactical changes introduced by British and other coalition troops in Helmand.
Defence sources said some of the bombs had been “huge”, capable of crippling even the most heavily armoured vehicles, such as Warriors.
The explosion that killed three members of the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG) on August 6, as they were travelling in a Jackal armoured vehicle, was so enormous that the sources admitted it was “a miracle” that the fourth soldier involved survived. He was seriously wounded.