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UK troops suffer higher death rate in Afghanistan than Iraq

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Aug 28, IRNA
UK-Afghanistan
British forces are being killed in Afghanistan at a faster rate than at the height of the war in Iraq, according to an analysis of casualty figures.

The death rate among British troops was found to be even exceeding the number suffered by their American counterparts in Afghanistan.

A survey conducted by the Medical Research Council (MRC) showed that the UK rate had reached eight in every 1,000 servicemen and women sent to the country to fight the Taliban this summer after a sharp increase in roadside bomb attacks in Helmand province.

The number is higher than the level seen during the first six weeks of the Iraq War in 2003 (around six per 1,000) and even the rate of 7.5 per 1,000 experienced by US troops in the run-up to the troop surge in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, the rate was found to have also overtaken the 6.6 per 1,000 suffered by American troops, whose numbers are four times more than the current UK deployment of just over 8,000 military personnel.

Altogether, a total of 136 members of the US-led coalition have been killed in Afghanistan since May, compared with 134 in Iraq, where the US has more than four times as many troops.

So far this year, 30 British servicemen and women have died in Afghanistan, the highest level since the UK started to deploy troops in Helmand two years ago. All but seven of the 116 British troops killed have been since 2006.

In contrast, the British casualty rates in Iraq have dropped off dramatically since the troops withdrew from Basra to their airport base outside the city last September.

No UK servicemen have been killed in Iraq since March prompting expectations that the remaining 4,200 will be cut sharply next year.

Speculation is that UK troop numbers in Afghanistan may rise further to as many as 14,000, almost 6,000 more than the current number.

Co-author of the MRC report Professor Sheila Bird said that the level of fatalities that have been sustained in Afghanistan is "as bad as the worst that we've seen across the period in Iraq." "It really has been consistently high, there has been no let up for these guys, it has been consistently major combat in Afghanistan throughout. The deployment has increased but the fatality rate has not come down," Bird said.

She suggested that the soaring death rates might be used to justify calls for a "surge" in Afghanistan similar to that seen in Iraq last year, but also expressed caution.

"It is a different sort of war in Afghanistan so the same solution will not necessarily apply but consistently in Afghanistan our troops have been facing the level of major combat that prompted the surge," the visiting professor from Strathclyde University said.

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