Eight British troops die in Afghan war in 24 hours

By Tim Castle and Matt Falloon

LONDON/L'AQUILA, Italy (Reuters) - Britain said on Friday eight soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan, its worst death toll in a 24-hour period, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown said troops faced a "very hard summer" battling insurgents.

Five troops on foot patrol were killed by two blasts, the highest death toll in a single attack.

Britain has now lost 184 soldiers in Afghanistan since it joined the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, more than the 179 deaths during its campaign in Iraq that began in 2003.

Fifteen soldiers, including four officers, have been killed in the past 10 days in the fight against Taliban insurgents.

The heavy losses threaten to damage British public support for the deployment in Afghanistan and further hurt Brown's already poor opinion poll ratings ahead of a British parliamentary election due by mid-2010.

Most newspapers led their early Saturday editions with reports of the losses, with the right-leaning Daily Mail urging Brown to "back our troops -- or pull them out".

"We cannot go on as we are, watching the bravest and best of their generation dying at the rate of more than one a day ... for an ill-defined cause and with inadequate backup," it said.

The Times said the deaths recalled the worst moments of the 1982 Falklands conflict, when British troops retook the South Atlantic islands after an invasion by Argentine forces.