Blast kills top bomb specialist
A BOMB disposal expert was killed on New Year’s Eve trying to clear an improvised bomb.
The sapper, whose family has been informed, died near Sangin in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.
British Forces last year lost 108 personnel, most of them to such bombs, in the bloodiest year since the 1982 Falklands War. The toll since operations began in Afghanistan in 2001 is now 245.
The soldier, from 33 Engineer Regiment (Ex- plosive Ordnance Disposal), Royal Engineers, is the latest bomb disposal specialist to be killed.
He was from the same regiment as Corporal Loren Marlton-Thomas, 28, who died in November.
Last October Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid, 30, of the Royal Logistic Corps, was killed by a bomb near Sangin. And in 2008 the first soldier in 26 years to get the George Medal twice, Sergeant Major Gary O’Donnell, 40, died clearing a bomb.
