300 troops head for Helmand as comrades pull out of Sangin

'Model soldier':Trooper James Leverett
12 April 2012

Three hundred more British troops are being sent to Afghanistan, Defence Secretary Liam Fox announced today.

The soldiers, from the 2nd Battalion, the Duke of Lancaster Regiment, are based in Cyprus.
They will be deployed in weeks, if not days, boosting the British force in central Helmand.

Fierce fighting with the Taliban is expected in the coming weeks. Other Nato allies are also expected to send small numbers of reinforcements.

Mr Fox also confirmed that UK troops are to pull out of the Sangin area, handing over to the Americans, to concentrate on protecting central Helmand including the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, the economic centre of Gereshk, Babaji and Nad-e-Ali.

He told the Commons £189 million will be spent on new equipment to improve links between British and Afghan forces. Just under £160 million will go on surveillance and communications apparatus, with about £20 million for personal equipment including helmets, body armour, night vision kit and machineguns, and around £10 million on protected vehicles.

Ninety-nine British soldiers have died in Sangin. The district, where 40 Commando Royal Marines is trying to impose security, has seen some of the most intense fighting the British military has faced since the Second World War.

The deployment of more soldiers, which will take British troop numbers to 9,800 plus special forces, is intended to be temporary. But it comes amid growing worries about the rising UK military death toll, which stands at 312. Military experts say Nato forces in Helmand are reaching a "critical mass" where they can take and hold territory from the insurgents.

Britain has 8,000 soldiers in the province, while America sent 20,000 Marines there under the "surge" strategy aimed at bringing stability and paving the way for Allied troops to come home.

Ex-Army chief General Sir Richard Dannatt said the number of British troop deaths is likely to rise. He told BBC radio: "I don't want to see it get to 400. Realistically over the next few years it probably will. We have got to make sure the general public understands why we are in Afghanistan and that the cost, while very, very difficult for the families that lose loved ones, is worth the price we are paying."

He also told how UK troops sent to Helmand in 2006 to safeguard reconstruction work became like "flies in a honeypot", targeted by the Taliban and dragged into conflict.

Meanwhile, Nato admitted today that it mistakenly killed five Afghan soldiers. They were launching an ambush on insurgents in the eastern Ghazni province when Nato aircraft reportedly fired on them without warning.

Three US soldiers were reported killed today by a roadside bomb in the south, and the Ministry of Defence named a soldier killed when his armoured
vehicle was bombed on Monday as Trooper James Anthony Leverett, 20, from South Yorkshire, of Viking Group, D (The Green Horse) Squadron, The Royal Dragoon Guards.

Tributes paid to model soldier'

A British serviceman killed in a blast in Helmand Province was a "model soldier", his comrades said today. Trooper James Leverett, 20, pictured, of the Royal Dragoon Guards, who grew up in Sheffield and Rotherham, was in a vehicle which hit a device on Monday. Lieutenant Colonel James Carr-Smith, Commanding Officer of the Dragoon Guards, praised his "significant potential". Trooper Leverett was due to become a father.

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