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The Special Boat Service (SBS) team are said to have been helping an Afghan family after their car was blown up by a home-made bomb. The men refused to abandon the family after one of the adults was killed and a young girl badly injured and instead stood their ground and battled the jihadis for six hours. The SBS patrol was attacked as they treated the injured girl. They were forced to take cover in an abandoned compound and fought until nightfall when they managed to escape with the wounded youngster.

The patrol came under attack and was forced into a fighting withdrawal to an abandoned compound SBS source

An SBS source told the Daily Star: “The SBS team had a medic with them who was trauma-trained. “He immediately began treating the girl and stopped the bleeding. Then the patrol came under attack and they were forced into undertaking a fighting withdrawal to an abandoned compound. “The one chance the SBS guys had was to last until nightfall and then they would have the advantage because of their night-vision equipment.” The team had been on a joint patrol with Afghan special forces in eastern Afghanistan when they were ambushed.

Elite troops from SBS

Most British combat troops had been withdrawn from Afghanistan by 2014 but hundreds have been redeployed in the last year following a request from US President Donald Trump and NATO to stamp out the threat from ISIS and other terror groups in the war-torn region. Military chiefs said the there are now around 1,000 British troops deployed in Afghanistan. Thousands of ISIS fighters sneaked into Afghanistan after being driven out of Syria and Iraq in a series of crushing defeats a the hands of the US-led coalition. Earlier on Sunday a Taliban attack on a government security compound in central Afghanistan killed at least 14 people and wounded more than 180, including scores of children. Islamist Taliban fighters detonated a car bomb in Ghazni city near an office of Afghanistan's main intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), during the morning rush hour.

At least 14 people were killed in a bomb attack in Afghanistan today