Five British soldiers have been shot dead after a rogue Afghan policeman turned a heavy machinegun against a British training team inside a checkpoint in Helmand Province.

Sergeant Major Darren Chant, Sergeant Matthew Telford and Guardsman James Major from the Grenadier Guards died alongside Acting Corporal Steven Boote and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith from the Royal Military Police.

They were killed in the village of Shin Kalay in Nad-e’Ali district of Helmand Province yesterday afternoon. Six British soldiers were injured in the same incident, several of them seriously.

Two Afghan policemen, including the commander of the checkpost, were also injured before their assailant managed to escape.

Sergeant Telford, from the Grimsby area, was a veteran of several operational tours of duty, and had arrived in Afghanistan two weeks ago. He leaves a wife, Kerry, and two sons aged four and nine. His uncle, William Ferrand, told the BBC: "It was his job and he loved doing it. Nobody wants their family to go out there but it’s what he wanted to do."

Western military officials in Afghanistan told The Times that the British training mentoring team, which consisted of two specialist trainers from the Royal Military Police and 14 Grenadier Guards, had just returned from a patrol with Afghan policemen, and were relaxing and doing post-patrol paperwork.

Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, the head of the district council in Nad Ali district, confirmed that the Afghan police and their British mentors were drinking tea together when the firing began from the roof of the compound.

"He first fired on the commander of the police and his deputy then on the British soldiers. He escaped on a motorbike," said Mr Helmandwal.

All the British troops would have had a loaded weapon to hand, but they were clearly not expecting an attack inside their base, and were not apparently wearing body armour.

A tribal elder from Nad-e Ali said the rogue policeman, who was originally from Musa Qala in northern Helmand and named by local people as Gulbaddin, attacked the British troops with a PK heavy machine gun.

"He had been working for the police for two years and he graduated from the police academy (in Kandahar) a year ago," he said. "He was from the Alozai tribe."

Most of the police in Nad-e Ali are Noorzai tribesmen. A spokesman for the US-led training mission said all police in the district had undergone an intensive course, known as Focused District Development, within the last year.

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