CHILDREN working the roadside stall in central Lashkar Gah yesterday noticed nothing unusual about the calm and relaxed man who chatted with them in the morning sun.

Then just before 11am, at the sound of engines from an approaching British patrol, the man hurled himself in front of the lead Land Rover, detonating his suicide bomb vest and killing one Royal Marine and seriously injuring another.

Two of the stall children lay dead and four civilians were wounded.

The attack marked the first fatality for 3 Commando Brigade, which deployed to Helmand this month, and signalled a form of attack much harder to fight than the waves of Taleban fighters that targeted British forces in the summer.

Whatever the intensity of that past action, Nato forces could use their airpower to telling effect against concentrated Taleban formations in Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar province. Now suicide bombers and small groups of Taleban are striking across southern Afghanistan, ambushing convoys and killing Afghans employed by foreign organisations.

Last night Brigadier Jerry Thomas, the new commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said: “Our thoughts are very much with the families, friends and colleagues of those who were killed and injured in this cowardly and indiscriminate attack. We should not forget that innocent Afghans going about their daily business were also injured, including two children who were killed.”

Yesterday’s death took to 17 the number of British soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan since May. It came only 24 hours after the previous commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler, claimed that the Taleban had been “tactically defeated”.

The Taleban calculate that they do not need a symbolic victory to win. They need only to bleed out time and money and stretch Nato’s military resources until the local population loses faith in the ability of foreign troops to improve the situation.

Development may well be the way to draw local support away from the militants and smother their ability to move and find shelter. However, it does not take much violence to scare off officials from the Department for International Development or other foreign agencies responsible for allocating funds for reconstruction in southern Afghanistan.

“What’s the use of building a nice new school if people are too frightened to use it?” said an Afghan official in Kandahar. “Why pledge money to a project in a village you can’t protect?”

Nato commanders agree that the key to greater security lies in training the fledgeling Afghan police force to extend the rule of law while providing enough stability for reconstruction, but it will require many more troops to do this.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato Secretary-General, on a visit to London yesterday, highlighted the need for more troops, but there is little enthusiasm among Nato members to commit more soldiers to the 31,000 already in Afghanistan.

In Lashkar Gah last night an angry crowd gathered outside the home of a man injured in the attack to denounce the British presence. “What are the British doing for us?” they shouted. “They are bringing instability, problems for our society and suicide attacks.”

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