Midland terrorists battling our troops

Taliban terrorists with West Midland accents are leading the fight against British troops in Afghanistan, it was revealed today in security service briefing papers.

The shock news comes just weeks before more than 100 Territorial Army members from the region begin a six-month tour of duty on the front line in the battled-scarred country's most dangerous province.

Spy planes tapping into battlefield radio conversations between enemy forces in the trouble-torn Helmand district have recorded people speaking with West Midland accents, official security service briefing papers disclose.

The information raises the horrifying prospect of jihadists raised in this country being engaged in some of the bloodiest battles involving British troops since the Second World War.

Even more worrying is that RAF Nimrod aircraft listening to "chatter" on the ground have heard increasing numbers of British voices among the enemy.

One senior military source confirmed: "We have been hearing a lot more Punjabi, Urdu and Kashmiri Urdu speakers fall back into English in, for example, Brummie accents."

MI5 has estimated that up to 4,000 British Muslims had travelled to Pakistan and, before the fall of the Taliban, to Afghanistan for military training.

The main concern until now has been about the parts some of them had played in terrorist plots in the UK, several of which have been based in the West Midlands – including the recent foiled plot hatched in a Birmingham house to kidnap and behead a British soldier.

"We are now involved in a kind of surreal mini-British civil war a few thousand miles away," said one Army officer.

Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the Commons' sub-committee on anti-terrorism, conceded: "It is not surprising some of these jihadists have ended up in Afghanistan."

More than 100 West Midland members of the Territorial Army 4 Mercian Regiment fly out to Afghanistan next month.