New rules of war put women on front line in Iraq and Afghanistan

Britain’s increasing use of women on the front line of war was called into question yesterday after Afghanistan claimed its first female casualty.

The intelligence officer, named last night as Sarah Bryant, 26, was on a secret counter-terrorism mission in Helmand province when she was killed along with three reserve members of the Special Air Service when their armoured Land Rovers were hit by a roadside bomb.

It was the greatest single loss of life for the Territorial Army since the Second World War and the biggest single loss of life for British troops since September 2006, when 14 personnel were killed in an RAF Nimrod crash near Kandahar. It brings to nine the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan in as many days