The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

Taleban snipers and small bands of sharp shooters are partly to blame for more than 100 Nato deaths this month, making it the deadliest by far of the nine-year war.

Although Nato said that it was still too early to confirm a definite change in Taleban tactics, US and British officials admitted that more soldiers were dying in “pinpointed” attacks and “small sniping incidents” than before.

The monthly toll of allied casualties topped 100 for the first time yesterday, with the announcement in the United States that a soldier had died on June 24, in the western province of Farah.

Four Norwegian soldiers were killed by an explosion in the north west of the country on Sunday, and a British soldier was killed by a single bullet, in Helmand, later the same evening.

The majority of the deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices – the Taleban’s deadly homemade bombs – in Helmand and Kandahar, where the insurgency is fiercest, but an unusually large number of soldiers were killed by small arms fire.

Of the 20 British fatalities this month, nine of them were shot dead, seven were killed in explosions and four died when their vehicle rolled into a canal.

The Ministry of Defence said that the most recent British soldier to die, Corporal Jamie Kirkpatrick, was killed by a “single round” as he made his way back to a checkpoint in Nahr-e Saraj. “Despite immediate first aid he was sadly killed in action,” the statement said.

Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said that 12 soldiers had died this month from non-combat related injuries, which includes accidents and suicides, 81 were killed in action, and another eight died of their injuries in hospitals outside Afghanistan, bringing the total to 101.

“There’s anecdotal evidence that [the insurgents] have been successful in some areas where we haven’t seen success before – in face-to-face incidents, these small sniping incidents” Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph T. Breassale, a coalition spokesman, said.

He said that it was not always “one guy with a long gun shooting from a hide position,” which is the military’s definition of a sniper, but “small skirmishes” instead. In the past, Western forces have often derided the insurgents for their “spray and pray” approach to battle, but that carelessness has now gone. (Read more)