LONDON - The number of British soldiers to die in Afghanistan overtook the toll in Iraq on Friday, underlining the shift in focus between the two theatres of war.
| I'm not sure why the second clause was added -- British soliders were dying in Afghanistan even when the focus was on Iraq. |
The Ministry of Defence on Friday announced the deaths of eight soldiers Afghanistan, taking to 184 the total number killed since operations against the Taliban Islamists began in late 2001. Of these, at least 147 were killed as a result of hostile action.
Friday's deaths took the Afghanistan toll past that in Iraq, where 179 soldiers died since the campaign began in 2003. Of these, at least 136 were killed due to hostile action.
| Taking considerably more of the enemy with them, one imagines. |
The last solider to die in Iraq was Private Ryan Wrathall following a gunshot wound suffered in the southern city of Basra. He was the only British soldier to die in Iraq this year.
| But Iraq is not the danger to the region it was when the Coalition invaded in 2003, and Arab imaginations have been stirred by the possibility of democratic self-rule instead of tyranny, so he did not die in vain. |
British forces formally ended combat operations in Iraq on April 30, one month ahead of schedule, and have withdrawn from their last remaining base in Basra. A small Royal Navy training team remains at the nearby port of Umm Qasr.
British troop numbers were the second largest in the Iraq campaign, peaking at 46,000 at the height of combat operations. British troop levels in Iraq were at 4,100 before the final withdrawal.
As British troop numbers were scaled down in Iraq, the numbers in Afghanistan rose. Some 8,300 British troops are now in Afghanistan, largely in the troubled southern Helmand Province battling Taliban insurgents.
The deaths of five soldiers in two explosions while on patrol near the town of Sangin in Helmand was one of the worst incidents in terms of British casualties since the start of operations in Afghanistan. Four soldiers were killed in a blast in June 2008, and 14 people died in a Nimrod aircraft crash in 2006.
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