A NATO military chief asked yesterday for another 2,500 troops to be sent to southern Afghanistan to reinforce the Canadian and British battlegroups that have been under fierce attack by the Taleban for the past two months.

Appealing to the chiefs of staff of the alliance’s 26 nations at a meeting in Warsaw, General James Jones, the American head of Nato in Europe, said that he also wanted more helicopters and transport aircraft. He wanted another battlegroup of about 1,000 soldiers as well as the necessary support units to back it up.

There were no immediate offers. Turkey, a Nato member with one of the largest armies in the alliance, said that it would not be contributing any more troops to Afghanistan. It has 900 soldiers in the country.

As Nato’s military chiefs turned their attention to the shortfall in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence in London announced that two soldiers serving in Iraq had died.

Lance Corporal Paul Muirhead and Gunner Lee Darren Thornton, who were serving with 58 Battery 12 Regiment Royal Artillery, were injured when a patrol came under fire in al-Qurna, north of Basra.

They were in the same unit as two other soldiers who were killed by a roadside bomb near the town of Al-Dayr on Monday. The two who died then were Gunners Samuela Vanua, 27, a Fijian, and Stephen Wright, 20, from Leyland, Lancashire. The number of British soldiers who have now died in Iraq since Operation Telic, codename for the British campaign, started in early 2003, has risen to 118, of whom 89 were killed in action.

A soldier who died in a battle with Taleban forces in Helmand province on Wednesday was named as Lance Corporal Luke McCulloch, 21, of the 1st Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment. Three other soldiers were injured in the attack.

The bodies of the 14 servicemen who died on board the RAF Nimrod that crashed in Kandahar province in Afghanistan last Saturday are to be repatriated in a ceremony to be held next week.

RAF chiefs will be among senior figures attending the service at RAF Kinloss, the home base of the Nimrod squadron in Morayshire. Twelve of the crew were from 120 Squadron, RAF Kinloss. A member of the Royal Marines and a soldier from the 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment were also killed.

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