Nearly half of Britons think the military campaign in Afghanistan is actually increasing the threat of a terrorist attack on home soil, a poll said Wednesday, amid rising public criticism of the war.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government and military leaders have argued that defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan will help reduce the risk of an attack by extremists in the region against Britain and other Western countries.
But only 21 percent surveyed supported that view, while 46 percent said the conflict was in fact increasing the threat by creating anger and resentment among the Muslim population, according to the GFK NOP poll.
Another 14 percent believed it was making no difference to the threat, while 19 percent said they did not know either way, the poll for the Independent newspaper said.
The poll of 1,000 voters, conducted last weekend, is the latest showing falling support for British involvement in the conflict as the troop death toll rises.
The bodies of another six soldiers were given an emotional homecoming from Afghanistan on Tuesday.
The return of the coffins -- including five men shot dead last week by a "rogue" Afghan policeman they were helping to train -- marked a low point of Britain's involvement in the eight-year conflict.
The latest repatriation of bodies also came as questions grow about the Afghan mission, crystallised in a row between Brown and one dead serviceman's grieving mother.
Brown apologised to the mother of a soldier killed last month after she complained that his handwritten letter of condolence was strewn with errors.
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