Tributes paid to NI soldier

TRIBUTES WERE paid yesterday to a woman British soldier from Northern Ireland who was killed while serving in Afghanistan.

Channing Day (25), a medic from Comber, Co Down, died with a male colleague following an attack on a British army patrol in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province.

She is the first woman soldier from Northern Ireland to be killed in Afghanistan, according to the British army.

A total of 435 British military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001. Ms Day is the 11th person based and living in the North to have died in the conflict. The two soldiers died in an exchange of gunfire with an Afghan who is believed to have been a police officer but who was not wearing uniform. The Afghan, who is understood to have been accompanying the patrol, was also killed.

The full circumstances behind the shooting remain unclear, said a British ministry of defence spokesman. “At this stage we do not know what initiated the exchange of gunfire and an investigation is ongoing.”