A RALLY was held in Huddersfield seeking an end to the war in Afghanistan.

Members of the Huddersfield Stop The War Coalition marked Armed Forces Day on Saturday with an open-air rally in Huddersfield Market Place.

They asked people to sign a petition calling for an end to the war, as more than 300 British troops have lost their lives so far in the conflict.

Nine of those have died in the past week and hours after the rally there was news of another victim.

A soldier injured in a bomb blast died in hospital.

June Jones, a spokeswoman for the Huddersfield group, said: “In line with the National Stop the War Coalition, we are calling for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.

“This nine-year war is the longest in US history – even longer than the war in Vietnam and it is very clear that it is aimless and unwinnable.

“At least 64% of the British public agree with the call to get the troops out.

“There is no justification for British troops to stay a single day longer to kill and be killed in Afghanistan.

“David Cameron says that now British troops are operating alongside US troops ‘it is making a big difference...we are getting to a period where parts of Afghanistan can be run by the Afghans themselves’.

“This is absolute rubbish and David Cameron will have the blood on his hands of every British soldier who is killed or seriously wounded and every Afghan civilian who dies as a result of the continuing occupation.

“It is time to bring this futile and bloody war to an end.”

The British soldier who died from injuries sustained in an explosion in Afghanistan earlier this month was likely to be named later today.

The serviceman, from 4th Regiment Royal Artillery, part of Combined Force Nahr-e Saraj North, died on Saturday at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Birmingham.

He was injured on June 10 in a blast in the Nahr-e Saraj North District of Helmand Province while on a joint patrol with the Afghan National Army. His family has been told.

The serviceman’s death takes the number of British troops who have died in the Afghan campaign to 308.

It is also the 19th fatality this month – approaching the conflict’s record monthly toll of 22, which was reached last June.