Senior British officer killed in Afghanistan
Tributes were being paid today to a senior British army officer killed in action in Afghanistan who was the highest-ranked British soldier to die since the Falklands war.
Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was killed near Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, on Wednesday. He was killed along with 18-year-old Trooper Joshua Hammond.
General Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, said the commanding officer was at the “leading edge of his generation” while his wife Sally said the 39-year-old father-of-two would be “sorely missed”.
Lt Col Thompson was in a resupply convoy in order to visit his men who were conducting a major operation in hostile territory when a bomb was detonated under his vehicle.
A total of 171 UK servicemen and women who have died in Afghanistan since operations began in October 2001.
The two deaths came as nearly 4,000 newly-arrived US Marines and 650 Afghan troops launched a massive pre-dawn operation in Taliban-controlled areas of Helmand in a bid to clear insurgents from the region ahead of Afghanistan’s presidential election in August.
