Dead soldier's mother calls for Afghan pull-out

Elizabeth Chant said her son, Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, loved the army but she voiced concerns about the growing British death toll in Afghanistan, which now stands at 230.

She told the BBC: "Darren wouldn't have me say anything bad, but I do think that those boys should come home now because there's too many being killed."

Nevertheless, Gordon Brown defended Britain's military mission in Afghanistan at the end of a bloody week for the forces and amid anger over the "corrupt and illegitimate" election of President Hamid Karzai.

The Prime Minister insisted that "we cannot, must not and will not walk away" from Afghanistan in the face of fierce criticism from all sides about Britain's bankrupt exit strategy.

His desperate comments came in a hastily arranged speech to London's Royal College of Defence Studies in the aftermath of the death of seven British servicemen, including the five who were gunned down.

Mr Brown admitted that Afghanistan's government has become "a byword for corruption" and warned that Mr Karzai will have "forfeited its right to international support" if he fails to root out corruption.

However, Mr Brown's spokesman hastily added that this should not be seen as a threat to pull out.

Even as senior army personnel clamoured for more troops and helicopters to finish the "noble cause" of democratising Afghanistan, peace campaigners exposed the real reasons for the war - control of natural gas resources and imperialist power projection - and demanded an immediate pull-out.

Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said: "This week's events have exposed the complete bankruptcy of Britain's exit strategy of training the Afghan army to replace them.

"This is really just an excuse to make the war more acceptable to people in the West, just like the illegitimate election of corrupt Karzai was."

She added: "They are losing and they should get out."

East London MP George Galloway, who was expelled from Labour for his outspoken views against the Iraq war, said that Mr Brown's policy on Afghanistan amounted to "we're here because we're here because we're here" - paraphrasing a famous song from World War I.

"Rather than sacrificing more of our young men and women for the kleptocratic, we should get them home for Christmas."