Afghanistan deaths: Six dead UK soldiers named by MoD

Clockwise from top left: Pte Wade, Pte Wilford, Pte Frampton, Pte Kershaw, Cpl Hartley and Sgt Coupe

Six British soldiers killed in southern Afghanistan by a Taliban bomb have been named by the Ministry of Defence.

Cpl Jake Hartley, 20, Pte Anthony Frampton, 20, and Pte Christopher Kershaw, 19, died in the blast.

Pte Daniel Wade, 20, Pte Daniel Wilford, 21, and Sgt Nigel Coupe, 33, were also killed when their Warrior armoured vehicle was hit on Tuesday.

The deaths take the total of British military personnel who have died in Afghanistan since 2001 to 404.

Sgt Coupe was from the 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment and the other five were from 3rd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment.

The deaths are the biggest single loss of British life in Afghanistan since September 2006 when an RAF Nimrod crashed, killing 14 people.

The soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment left their base in Warminster, Wiltshire, for Afghanistan on 14 February.

Flowers have been laid at the entrance to the base. Cpl Hartley would have turned 21 on Saturday.




All six soldiers were based at Battlesbury Barracks in Wiltshire.

Sgt Coupe was on secondment from the Duke of Lancaster's to the Yorkshire Regiment.

Senior army and intelligence officials in Helmand province told the BBC that the soldiers had been killed by a powerful, Taliban bomb that had been planted recently.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said the six soldiers were on a security patrol in a Warrior armoured fighting vehicle when it was caught in an explosion in Kandahar province.

The MoD said more details about the six soldiers would be released later.

The Taliban told the BBC that they carried out the attack and they were "very proud of it".

Most of the 9,500 UK troops in Afghanistan are expected to be withdrawn by the end of 2014, when 13 years of combat operations in the country are set to cease.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said morale among British troops serving in Afghanistan was "extremely high" despite the loss of the soldiers.



He told ITV1's Daybreak programme: "The people on the ground are acutely conscious of the risks that they are running but they are also incredibly proud of the job that they are doing - and rightly so - and hugely satisfied by the level of public support that they have back home.

"Morale on the ground in Afghanistan is extremely high, and it's high because the servicemen and women there know that they are doing a job and and are doing it well and that is their professional commitment to get that job done."

Head of the armed forces, General Sir David Richards, has said the UK will "hold its nerve" in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday that the deaths marked a "desperately sad day for our country".







source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17295858

Category: Feature , Political Issues