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Prince Harry killed Afghan insurgents during war

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Updated on July 5, 2023

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During his tenure as an Army helicopter pilot in Afghanistan, Prince Harry claims to have fired at Taliban fighters.

Prince Harry has returned from a four-month stint in Afghanistan, during which he operated his Apache helicopter and spoke candidly about the pressures and disappointments of being a royal who sought a life away from the spotlight.

“You are the man with the trigger in your hand, and if called upon, you will fire, and presumably you have and you will kill the enemy?” one journalist asked of his job in Afghanistan.

He said, “Yeah, so, lots of people have. … Yes, we fire when we have to, take a life to save a life, but essentially we’re more of a deterrent than anything else.

The prince, who commands the army’s most advanced attack helicopter, said he shot on the Taliban while supporting ground troops and rescuing injured Afghan and Nato forces. Insurgents may use his comments to incite anti-British sentiment, but the prince claims he was only doing his job. He said that the helicopter was mostly used as a deterrence.

During Harry’s tour, the Taliban threatened to abduct or kill him, and one Afghan rebel chief called him a drunken “jackal” out to kill innocent Afghans.

He talked about his participation in Afghanistan as well as other topics, including how he “let my family down” by being photographed nude in a Las Vegas hotel room last year.

He said this was “probably a classic example of me probably being too much Army and not enough prince.”

“But at the end of the day I was in a private area and there should have been a certain amount of privacy that one should expect,” he continued.

Missions to retrieve injured troops, he claimed, played a crucial role.

“Our job out here is to make sure the guys are safe on the ground.

“Now if that means shooting at someone who’s shooting at them, then we’ll do it.”

During a series of interviews while stationed in Camp Bastion in Helmand province, he alluded to the challenge of balancing his several tasks. In the troops, the prince was known as Captain Wales, and he described his “three mes”. “One in the army, one socially in my own private time, and then one with the family and stuff like that. So there is a switch and I flick it when necessary.”

Last September, his base was attacked on his birthday, although it was never clear if he was the intended target or if the Taliban raid, which killed two US marines, was in retaliation to a film that was viewed as offensive to the Prophet Mohammad.