Blair: British troops doing vital work
The death of three British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq today is a “terrible tragedy”, Tony Blair has said – but he insisted their work was “absolutely vital”.
Two servicemen died and two others were wounded when their patrol was attacked near the southern Iraqi town of Basra, where most UK troops are based.
The news comes just hours after the Ministry of Defence confirmed one soldier had been killed in a suicide bomb attack in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
“This is a terrible tragedy, particularly of course for the families of the servicemen involved. I feel very deeply for them at this moment,” Mr Blair told the BBC.
But he added: “It is important for us to make sure we stand firm in Afghanistan and stop that country going back to being a training camp for export of terrorism around the world.
“We should be very proud of the fact that we’ve got British armed forces willing to stand up and do this work, which is immensely difficult but absolutely vitally important.”
This morning the new head of the army, Richard Dannatt, warned that British troops were only “just” coping with the deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It prompted the Conservatives to accuse ministers of playing fast and loose with the armed forces, sending them on more deployments than ever but without the resources to back them up.
Today Mr Blair admitted it was “very tough” for UK and all the other Nato troops serving in Afghanistan, but stressed their work was vital for domestic and global security.
“We should be very proud as a country that we have armed forces who are so dedicated,” he said.
Today’s deaths come after 14 servicemen were killed on Saturday when their RAF Nimrod aircraft crashed in southern Afghanistan. At RAF Kinloss, where most of the men were based, the flags flew at half mast today.
This lunchtime, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells told BBC Radio Four’s The World at One that other Nato members should deploy more troops to Afghanistan.
“I don’t want to give the impression there is any kind of crisis – there isn’t that. It is just that the job can be done much more quickly and I think much more safely if it is clear that all the Nato members involved in this are pulling their weight,” he said.
