HARRY FACES GLOBAL FURY OVER TALIBAN KILL CLAIMS

Veterans accuse him of putting his own safety at risk as well as that of royals and ex-comrades

PRINCE Harry was last night accused of putting lives at risk with his claim of killing 25 Taliban.

Former military commanders, pilots, aid workers and diplomats condemned the remarks, which handed the militants a propaganda victory.

Afghan-based UK citizens said they feared for their safety after harry used his new book to detail his experiences serving in a combat helicopter.

they fear the taliban could take revenge on them after the prince said he gunned down 25 insurgents. Others said harry had betrayed ex-comrades by risking their safety, his own and that of the Royal Family.

harry’s suggestion that to cope with the strain of killing he dehumanised his victims – seeing them as chess pieces and not people – triggered a particularly furious response.

he also faced the ignominy of being branded a ‘ big-mouth loser’ by the

Taliban and suggested he should be brought before an international court for his ‘crimes’. The mounting backlash came amid further explosive revelations from the memoir Spare. In further developments:

■ Harry insisted he wanted ‘reconciliation’ with his brother and family but there had to be ‘accountability’ from them first;

■ The prince told US TV network ABC that his mother would be ‘sad’ at his and William’s rift;

■ In more details from a translated copy of the book, Harry claims Charles was fearful ‘a novel and resplendent’ Meghan would steal the limelight from him and Camilla;

■ Further extracts detail the hopedfor ‘sisterhood’ between Kate and Meghan dissolved in a series of disagreements over everything from lip gloss to wedding seating plans;

■ Harry and William’s relationship broke down over petty squabbles ranging from beards to jealousy over soft furnishings;

■ Buckingham Palace continued to retain a dignified silence in the face of Harry’s onslaught.

The outcry about the prince’s Taliban remarks was led by activist Pen Farthing, who runs an animal refuge in Helmand – where the fiercest fighting involving British troops took place and where Harry did his killing.

Following the Taliban’s rapid takeis over of the country in 2021, Mr Farthing and other British aid workers have run the gauntlet against the regime.

He said: ‘We now have to deal with Taliban officials directly in every aspect of daily life here. We don’t need former soldiers bragging about numbers they killed, especially as it was all for nothing. I just hope the Taliban don’t decide to make any examples of the ex-military they can get to.’

Army officers agreed Harry’s remarks could have ‘ serious repercussions’ for the security of the Royal Family, British troops and himself.

Major Chris Hunter, a decorated former Army bomb disposal officer who served in Afghanistan, told GB News: ‘Very rarely will any soldier, sailor or airman, serving or a veteran, talk about numbers of kills. That, coupled with the fact it uses terms like chess pieces, dehumanises them.

‘ I think that could very, very easily cause some serious repercussions.

‘Not just for his own security, but to the wider security of the Royal Family and to the servicemen and women on operations across the world.

‘The comments are sad and very much a betrayal. Everyone in the Army swears an oath of allegiance to the monarch, he’s betrayed his own family for money. It is just truly sad. I’m very, very disappointed.’

Prince Harry spent five months in 2012-13 as a gunner aboard an Apache gunship, the most lethal British helicopter to take to the skies.

Most, if not all his kills, were recorded by a camera beneath the helicopter’s nose, with the grainy footage being watched by the prince and his colleagues after every mission.

Major- General Jonathan Shaw, previously an assistant chief of the Defence Staff, was the most senior officer to condemn Harry’s remarks.

The former SAS commander said: ‘Soldiers don’t talk about killing for good reason. Harry’s comments break an unwritten code. I suspect this is motivated by his PR people’s drive for money.’

Major General Shaw’s remarks were echoed by Colonel Tim Collins. The man who famously gave a rousing speech on the eve of battle in Iraq in 2003 told Forces.net: ‘This isn’t how you behave in the British Army; it is not how we think. He has badly let the side down. We don’t do notches on the rifle butt, we never did.’

According to many senior sources a danger is that Harry’s narrative, which focuses on lives taken rather than lives saved by UK forces, plays to rhetoric repeatedly spouted by the Taliban, and hate clerics here, that the war was an anti-Muslim campaign.

One well-placed source said the Royal Household had been ‘shocked’ by the extracts.

IT IS hard to overstate the profound dismay which has greeted the Duke of Sussex’s tell-all memoir.

Even Harry’s most ardent sympathisers would concede that in trashing his brother and disclosing private remarks made by his grieving father at Prince Philip’s funeral, he has managed to insult both his family and the institution to which he owes his gilded existence.

But of all the revelations splashed across 550 pages of rage and self-pity, none threatens to carry more serious ramifications than the prince’s irresponsible boast of killing 25 Taliban fighters during his 20-week tour of Afghanistan in 2012.

not only was his reference to those he killed as ‘chess pieces’ deeply offensive, his comments are also a shameful betrayal of his former comrades.

As Andrew neil points out in the pages opposite, the prince has broken one of the Armed Forces’ most long-standing omertas: never brag about your kill count.

Indeed, many of us have loved ones who have fought bravely for their country yet would never dream of discussing something quite so personal as to whether they killed anyone, least of all publicly.

Small wonder, then, that both senior military personnel and veterans have reacted with horror to Harry’s indiscretion.

on top of that, the prince’s comments demonstrate an extraordinary recklessness, especially when you consider how much he understandably stresses the need to protect his family.

By antagonising the extremists, he might have jeopardised not just the safety of himself and those closest to him but also British soldiers who continue to be deployed around the world.

The Taliban certainly wasted no time in capitalising on Harry’s comments yesterday, branding him ‘cruel’ and ‘barbaric’ – words which will send chills through the Sussexes’ private protection team in montecito.

Doubtless the prince will now renew his calls to be given police protection when he visits this country. But why should he, now that he is a private citizen?

Besides, considering the fallout from these latest bombshells, it would probably be wise for the time being for him to stay well away from these shores altogether.