A British soldier has been killed in an explosion in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said on Friday, according to Reuters. The soldier from the 1st Battalion The Coldstream Guards died in a blast near the large Camp Bastion base in the southern Helmand Province on Thursday. He is the 221st British Army casualty since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban. Britain has about 9,000 troops in the country mainly based in Helmand. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is due to make a statement to parliament about Afghanistan next week as expectations grow that Britain will boost its troop levels there by 500. A poll for the BBC on Wednesday found most Britons remain opposed to the war in Afghanistan. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed said they were against British military operations in Afghanistan, while 37 percent supported them, the ICM poll said. The same poll conducted in 2006 showed 53 percent opposition to the conflict and 31 percent support, with higher numbers of "Don't Knows" three years ago.
