UK Pakistanis join Taliban in hordes

London: A number of British Pakistanis have joined Taliban insurgents to fight against the UK troops in southern Afghanistan, a media report claimed on Sunday.

The intelligence about their presence in Helmand province of Afghanistan, where 13 British soldiers have died, is believed to have come from Pakistan where authorities recently arrested suspects said to be involved in training of al-Qaeda and Taliban recruits, The Sunday Times reported.

Pakistani, Chechen, Syrian, Egyptian, and Yemeni nationals are among the other foreign recruits fighting along side the Taliban, who train new recruits in the Pakistani city of Quetta, it claimed.

According to the report, a Pakistani official said on Saturday there were a number of British Pakistanis known to be fighting along side the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"They come quietly in twos and threes and then disappear. It's difficult to trace them as they (also) carry Pakistani passport."

A source close to the Taliban claimed that two British Pakistanis had gone through Waziristan tribal area on their way to fight the British Army six weeks ago.

A second Pakistani official said that others had since gone into Afghanistan 'in an individual capacity'.

The report quoted sources close to the Taliban as saying that 'no more than ten' of its fighters were known to be British passport holders. "There are a lot of Pakistanis (fighting with the Taliban) and one cannot say how many of them hold British passports."

News of British recruits among the Taliban suggested that the war in Afghanistan, like that in Iraq, has become a magnet for extremists determined to fight Western forces.

"It is not clear how many there are, but we are told they are definitely there," a defence source was quoted as saying. The report comes as the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch told BBC that British Muslims were suspected of taking part in the fighting in Iraq.

Commander Peter Clarke said the number of British Muslims suspected of being involved in supporting terrorism runs into 'thousands'.

British troops estimate they have killed more than 1,200 Taliban insurgents over the past three months. But there appears to be no end to the new recruits replacing those killed.

"The Pakistan border is the problem and we know it is hard to close it all off, but the Taliban seem to have a conveyor belt of new recruits," the source said.

According to the report, the fighting in the British area of operations has been fierce around the UK outposts at Sangin, Musa Qala and Nowzad in northern Helmand over the past few days, with RAF and US aircraft mounting repeated bombing raids.

Ranger Anare Draiva, of First Royal Irish Regiment was killed and another soldier was seriously wounded in a Taliban attack on the Musa Qala base on Friday.

Last week, a 20-man British patrol sent to root out a group of Taliban holed up in a house a kilometre from the Sangin base found themselves outnumbered by the insurgents.

Acting on intelligence that there were a small number of Taliban in the house the British called in air support to bomb the building.

The British troops waited in another building codenamed 'Chinese restaurant' while the building was demolished but there were far more Taliban than anticipated, the report said.