HIGHLY trained foreign fighters are pouring back into Afghanistan across the Pakistani border to take on British and other Nato troops, military sources have told The Times.

Intelligence suggests that fighters from Syria, Egypt and Yemen have joined the Taleban in attacking the troops from the Nato International Security Assistance Force.

The recent assaults by the Taleban on British outposts in the north of Helmand province in Sangin, Musa Qala, Nowzad and Kajaki, were all believed to have been assisted by foreign fighters.

The sources said that they had their own casualty-evacuation system which made it difficult to keep tabs on the scale of their involvement.

However, documentary evidence from some of the bodies examined immediately after an attack had provided proof that the foreigners were a mixture of nationalities. One source said: “We know they are coming from Egypt, Syria and the Yemen and there may well be foreign fighters from other countries who are once again taking up the Taleban cause.”

The involvement of foreign terrorists is a sensitive issue because of the implication that Pakistan is failing to stop the flow of groups affiliated to al-Qaeda from crossing into Afghanistan. Officially, the Taleban and foreign fighters are all lumped together as “anti-coalition militia” or ACMs.

President Musharraf has put large numbers of troops on the Pakistan border, but intelligence shows that arms and fighters are being transited across the mountain routes into Afghanistan with impunity. “Much more pressure needs to be put on Musharraf to do more at the border,” one senior military source said.

There is also a constant flow of newly-trained Taleban fighters coming across the border after receiving combat instruction at the camps in Quetta in Pakistan. “We don’t have enough troops on the Afghan side of the border to stop and search all vehicles, and every day the jingly trucks [large colourful trucks with chains hanging down at the front] are driving across the border, probably filled with weapons,” the sources said.

The Taleban and foreign fighters are equipped with a range of weapons, including 107mm Chinese rockets, anti-aircraft guns, portable surface-to-air missiles, heavy machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades; and there is evidence of a recoiless rifle, like an anti-tank weapon, which can blow a hole in a wall from a mile away.

“It’s not accurate from that distance, but we’ve seen it being used although we don’t know precisely what weapon it is,” one military source said.

The concerns about foreign fighters were revealed as the fighting in Helmand province — where 4,000 British troops are based — and in other Taleban-dominated areas, has diminished over the past week.

Lieutenant-Colonel David Hammond, standing in as British forces commander, said that there were still sporadic attacks. “The enemy is still there but so are we,” he said.

Military sources said that the Taleban had taken so many casualties in the fighting that they needed to regroup and reconsider their tactics.

However, Colonel Muhiadeen, commander of the Helmand-based 3rd Brigade of the Afghan National Army which will be a 3,000-man force by the end of the year, said: “If it wasn’t for Pakistan, the Taleban wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

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