UK Colonel's Death Raises Fury at Home

He's killed by roadside bomb after warning about lack of choppers
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 31, 2009 1:07 PM CDT
UK Colonel's Death Raises Fury at Home
British soldiers carry the coffin of Rupert Thorneloe in London in July.   (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Britain's newspapers are up in arms today over the revelation that a commander got killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan just weeks after warning his superiors they weren't doing enough to prevent such deaths. Lt. Col. Rupert Thorneloe complained in an email that troops didn't have enough helicopters and had to take dangerous road trips as a result.

“We all know we don't have enough," wrote Thorneloe, who is the highest-ranking British soldier to die in Afghanistan, notes the Guardian. "We cannot not move people, so this month we have conducted a great deal of administrative movement by road. This increases the IED threat and our exposure to it.”
(More Afghanistan stories.)

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