last updated: Wednesday 15 July 2009, 14:44pm

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Hundreds pay respects to dead soldiers

Hundreds line the streets of Wooton Bassett to pay their respects

Hundreds of people have paid their respects to eight British soldiers killed in a bloody 24 hours in Afghanistan.

Earlier, the families of all the men, including three who were aged just 18, were at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire to see the coffins, draped in Union flags, carried from the C17 aircraft.

The families attended a private ceremony at the chapel on the base before the men's hearses were driven through Wootton Bassett where hundreds of people lined the streets.

Corporal Jonathan Horne, Rifleman William Aldridge, Rifleman James Backhouse, Rifleman Joseph Murphy and Rifleman Daniel Simpson, of the County Down-based 2nd Battalion The Rifles, were killed near Sangin, Helmand province. Corporal Lee Scott, 26, from the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, died in an explosion near Nad-e-Ali.

The six died on Friday, while Rifleman Daniel Hume, 22, of 4th Battalion The Rifles, and Private John Brackpool, 27, of Prince of Wales' Company, 1st Battalion Welsh Guards died in the same 24-hour period on Thursday.

Crowds have appeared spontaneously in Wootton Bassett to pay their respects since the bodies of British service personnel started being brought back to Lyneham in 2007.

Campaigners want to rename the repatriation route The Highway of Heroes.

Expressing condolences at the deaths of servicemen in the country, the Prime Minister told the Commons it has been a 'sad and difficult time' for our Armed Forces and the country.

But he said that if the Taliban's 'vicious insurgency' is to be defeated, British troops must 'persist' with their mission.

Mr Brown said: 'It has been a very difficult summer and it is not over yet. But if we are to deny Helmand to the Taliban in the longterm; if we are to defeat this vicious insurgency and by doing so make Britain and the world a safer place, then we must persist with our operations in Afghanistan.

'I am confident we are right to be in Afghanistan - that we have the strongest possible plan and we have the resources needed to do the job.'

Tory leader David Cameron said more needed to be done to set out a 'tightly-defined, hard-headed and realistic' strategy and questioned whether the Prime Minister had turned down a military request for an extra 2,000 troops

The men's deaths bring the total number of British military fatalities in Afghanistan since the start of operations in 2001 to 184 - surpassing the 179 who died in Iraq.

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