A British junior defense minister said on Monday that he was wrong when he said that some former British soldiers had taken their own lives due to anger over the chaotic withdrawal of US-led forces from Afghanistan.
"Actually the thing I was referring to was inaccurate," James Heappey, a junior defense minister, told BBC TV. "We're looking very, very carefully at whether or not it is true that someone has taken their life in the last few days."
Heappey earlier told Sky News that some British military veterans from the Afghan war had taken their own lives because they were so devastated by the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from the country and the victory of the Taliban.
A spokesman for Britain's defense ministry denied that veterans had taken their own lives due to the withdrawal.
Britain lost 457 armed forces personnel in Afghanistan, or 13 percent of the international military coalition's 3,500 fatalities since 2001.
"I know, unfortunately, there have been soldiers who served in Afghanistan, indeed a soldier who served on my last tour in Afghanistan, who have taken their own lives in the last week or so because of the feelings they have had over what's happening in Afghanistan," James Heappey, a junior defense minister, had said earlier.
Heappey, who reached the rank of major before entering politics, said he was hearing the Taliban was now in control of the whole of Afghanistan but that the situation in Panjshir did not change the big picture.
Britain fears the Taliban's return and the vacuum left by the West's chaotic withdrawal will allow militants from al Qaeda to gain a foothold in Afghanistan, just 20 years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.