LONDON - Two more British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, the defence ministry said Sunday, taking the country's military death toll past the 200 mark and sparking renewed debate about whether the mission there is worth the human cost.
Ten British troops have been killed so far this month, and 22 died in July, Britain's bloodiest month since the invasion of Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it had been "a very difficult summer," but insisted the troops' presence in Afghanistan was key to keeping Britain safe.
"Three-quarters of the terrorist plots that hit Britain derive from the mountain areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan and it is to make Britain safe and the rest of the world safe that we must make sure we honour our commitment to maintain a stable Afghanistan," he said.
The Ministry of Defence said a soldier from 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was injured in an explosion during a foot patrol near Sangin in Helmand province on Saturday. He later died.
The soldier is the 201st British military fatality in Afghanistan.
Another soldier, from 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh, died earlier Saturday at a military hospital in England.
He had been wounded in a blast while on vehicle patrol Thursday in Helmand province.
Officials said both soldiers' families have been informed.
The British spokesman in Helmand, Lt. Col. Nick Richardson, said the troops remained "undaunted."
"The first death is no more or less difficult to deal with than the 201st, and we mark every fatality the same way," he said.
Britain has about 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, most based in Helmand, a centre of Taliban insurgents, and casualties have been rising steadily in the past year.
The rising toll -- more than the 179 personnel who died in Iraq -- has reignited a debate in Britain about its role in the war and the quality of its military equipment. The Afghan campaign has long been divisive, with polls showing Britons about evenly split between supporters and opponents of the mission.
Brown said British troops were helping make Afghanistan safe ahead of important presidential elections next week. But many in Britain are asking whether the mission's goal of a stable Afghanistan is achievable,
Graham Knight, whose son Ben was killed when a Royal Air Force Nimrod plane exploded over Afghanistan in 2006, said it was "time for an end to military action" in Afghanistan.
"We are ill-equipped and ill-advised," he said. "We should be getting the non-militant Taliban around the table and begin talks so we can embark on a withdrawal."
Some also doubt whether British troops have the right equipment for the job. Former military commanders and opposition politicians have called for more helicopters to reduce deaths from roadside bombs, the top killer of British troops in the country.
Brown said the government had "increased dramatically the resources we are spending in Afghanistan to deal with this new kind of threat, which is the roadside bomb, the electronic devices, the guerrilla warfare being practiced by the Taliban."
Afghans are due to vote Thursday in presidential elections, seen by the international community as a key marker of the country's progress toward becoming a stable democracy.
Militants have staged a series of attacks in the run-up to the vote, including a suicide car bombing Saturday near NATO headquarters in Kabul that killed seven people and wounded nearly 100.
