Ex-soldier’s heroic work in country s

province and at Erbil airport, right beside where I am at the moment.

“That wasn’t expected and made for a fun start of the year for us.

“To be fair, I didn’t even notice but my daughter phoned me up in the middle of the night and told me I’d been attacked.”

Solemani was head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ ruthless Quds Force. Under his leadership, it had directed terror attacks on US and UK troops throughout the Middle East.

Frank said his death signalled an escalation in attacks on US bases in the area.

He added: “It was bad for a long period of time. There were constant attacks against contractors for the US troops, with logistic convoys getting hit on the main supply routes. “There was a lot of indirect fire happening – usually rockets, rather than mortars. There’s no getting around it is a hostile environment. You’ve also still got the remnants of IS causing trouble not far away from some of the areas where we are operating. We paid very close attention to the security situation but we haven’t yet had to suspend our operations because we work closely with the Iraqi authorities.”

Former army hero Frank is HALO’s programme manager in Baghdad. The charity, based in Thornhill, near Dumfries, started demining in the region in 2018 and this year passed the milestone of clearing over 1000 deadly traps, including 700 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and 400 unexploded grenades and mortars.

They reached the landmark figure despite their work being suspended because of coronavirus.

Frank said: “Covid restrictions have meant our operations have been a bit stop-start.

“All our operations were suspended when the Iraqi government put the country into lockdown.

“We kept people in place during the height of the pandemic so that when we did get the green light to go back to work in mid-June, we could do so with the minimum of delay.

“And despite the stop-start nature of this year,