Teeth gritted with pain after bumpy hours in the back of an ambulance, the young man winced as he was wheeled through the hospital gate.

Lifted onto an examination table, the bloody wad of dressing pressed to his side was peeled back to reveal a bullet wound to his buttocks.

With a straggly beard, weather beaten face and tatty shalwar kameez clothes, the skinny 23-year-old resembled either a typical villager from rural Helmand, or equally one of the Taliban fighters that live among them.

The staff of the Emergency war surgery centre in Lashkar Gah do not care which, and have found through long experience that it is better not to ask questions.

For 15 years the 96-bed hospital run by an international medical charity called Emergency has given free treatment to those shot, blown up and blasted with shrapnel in Afghanistan's conflict.