Smash hit

The British Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) base in Lashkar Gah is heavily defended with 30ft Hesco walls and wire fences designed to prematurely detonate rocket propelled grenades.

It contains hundreds of British troops and the large civilian reconstruction component of the UK mission from the Foreign Office and the Department for Overseas Development (DfID).

Today, local residents who didn't want to be named for fear of Taleban retribution said they saw two truckloads filled with dead and wounded Taleban driven away from the Lashkar Bazaar area on the east of the city after the attack.

Another report was of Taleban dead being buried in the Bolan area. Alhough the Taleban attack appears to have been decisively defeated, local people said that there was atmosphere of rising panic inside Lashkar Gah.

"They attacked from everywhere," said one local man, who asked that his name only be given as Mirwais. "There were rockets and mortars. No one could sleep, everyone was trying to hide themselves. I don't trust the Afghan government or the British. Tell me where to escape to."

Haji Salim Khan, a tribal elder of the Alizai tribe living in Lashkar Gah said: "They were throwing artillery to the city. Children and women were weeping and screaming. I asked my tribe to protect me and twenty of my tribesmen surrounded my house. This is a shame, a shame, a shame, upon the British. They turned off the lights of the PRT and shut the doors. There are rumours they are going to withdraw from the city."

Colonel Page said that no lights were turned off in the PRT and that local people were, on the contrary, reassured by the defeat of the Taleban attack:

"The atmospherics we are getting are very far from that situation," he said. "There is a lot of confidence that Lashkar Gah was safe last night and will continue to be safe. The Afghan National Security Forces and British forces will continue to maintain that as the status quo."

The attack follows heavy fighting in recent days in the district of Nad Ali to the west of Lashkargar. Previously a government stronghold, the district and neighbouring Marja fell to Taleban fighters in September.

British forces from 3 Commando Brigade retook Nad Ali district centre with Afghan Army troops in a three day operation that finished on Saturday.

A statement by Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, the official Taleban spokesman for southern Afghanistan, had a different version of events.

"Until four in the morning the fight went on. We killed 25 government soldiers and destroyed ten Ranger vehicles. Several others soldiers were wounded. We targeted the NDS (Afghan intelligence department), the governor's residency and office and some other areas. Hundreds of Taleban participated in the fight. Four Taleban were killed and their bodies remain on the battleground. Three others were wounded.

"The rumours spread by the enemy that they killed dozens of Taleban are just to keep up the morale of the soldiers of the puppet government. It was a huge attack from three directions."

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