Fallen UK soldiers return from Afghanistan
Updated on 10 November 2009
Hundreds of people have paid tribute to six British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, lining the streets of Wootton Bassett as their coffins passed through the town.
The soldiers' bodies arrived in Wiltshire today just after 11am. A private repatriation ceremony is to be held for their families and later today hearses carrying their Union Jack-draped coffins will pass along the high street of nearby Wootton Bassett.
Five of the soldiers died last week after one of their colleagues, an Afghan policeman, opened fire at a checkpoint in Nad-e-Ali, Helmand province.
Two days later a soldier from the 3rd Battalion, The Rifles, was killed in an explosion near Sangin in southern Afghanistan. View a full list of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan here.
The soldiers (pictured below from left to right) are:
- WO1 Darren Chant, 40, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards
- Sgt Matthew Telford, 37, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards
- Gdn Jimmy Major, 18, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards
- Cpl Steven Boote, 22, Royal Military Police
- Cpl Nicholas Webster-Smith, 24, Royal Military Police
- Sjt Phillip Scott, 30, 3rd Battalion The Rifles 
The Ministry of Defence has also released details of the latest soldier to die in action in Afghanistan. Rifleman Samuel John Bassett from the 4th Battalion, The Rifles was killed in a blast on Remembrance Sunday.
Last night tributes were paid to 20-year-old Rifleman Philip Allen, who died a day earlier on Saturday.
The two latest deaths took the number killed in Afghanistan this year to 95 making this the bloodiest year for British forces since the Falklands War.
A total of 232 UK troops have died since the Afghan mission began in October 2001.
It has emerged that a mother of a soldier also killed in the conflict has challenged Prime Minister Gordon Brown over equipment shortages.
Jacqui Janes, who accused the prime minister of misspelling he sent her a hand-written condolence letter, confronted Brown in a telephone call.
"I know every injury my child sustained that day. I know that my son could have survived but my son bled to death," she said according to a transcript in the Sun.
"How would you like it if one of your children, God forbid, went to a war doing something that he thought, where he was helping protect his Queen and country and because of lack, lack of helicopters, lack of equipment, your child bled to death and then you had the coroner have to tell you his every injury?"
