By IRNA,
London : The rate at which British troops have been killed has virtually doubled in Afghanistan in the past year and is proportionately far higher than their American counterparts, according to figures released by the Medical Research Council (MRC).
The figures show that 155 British troops have been killed in Afghanistan since May 2009, this compares with a death toll of 152 in the previous three years.
As a proportion of the increasing number of troops deployed, the numbers represent a virtual doubling of the death rate from 7.4 to 14 per 1,000 personnel years. In contrast, the US rate increased by only about a fifth.
In the last 10 weeks, the proportion has surged to 17 per 1,000 personnel years, with British troops suffering 32 deaths. The US figure was just 6.8.
The MRC said that the numbers of British troops being killed are well above the threshold for “major combat” operations and now match those suffered by Soviet troops fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Six deaths per 1,000 personnel years is considered the yardstick for “major combat”, said Professor Sheila Bird, from the MRC Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge, which compiled the figures.
A total of 322 British forces personnel have been died in Afghanistan since 2001. If troop numbers are not reduced the MRC suggested that more than another 400 could be killed before the 2014, the target date for Britain’s withdrawal.
In addition, there have already been nearly 400 UK soldiers seriously wounded in Afghanistan. So far this year, there have been almost 650 field hospital admissions, including more than half the result of disease or “non-battle injury”.
The figures also show that over half of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan in the past few years have been victims of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Only a very small proportion, about 4%, have been killed by suicide bombers, whose main victims have been Afghan civilians.