LONDON, Feb 28: Prince Harry, the youngest son of Prince Charles and the late princess Diana, has been fighting the Taliban on the front line in Afghanistan, the defence ministry in London disclosed on Thursday.

The 23-year-old prince, an officer in the Household Cavalry regiment, has spent the past 10 weeks secretly serving in the province of Helmand, where most of Britain’s troops are based.

His deployment makes him the first British royal to be sent on active military service in nearly 26 years, when his uncle, Prince Andrew, flew Royal Navy helicopters during the Falklands war with Argentina in 1982.

The ministry of defence (MoD) had kept the young royal’s deployment secret under a news blackout agreed by British media for security reasons.

But the arrangement broke down after news was leaked out on the US website, the Drudge Report, which said that an Australian magazine, New Idea, and the German tabloid Bild were the first to break a world embargo.

As part of the deal a group of journalists visited the prince in Helmand on condition that details would only be publicised once he was safely back in Britain.

Last year, Harry’s planned tour to Iraq had to be shelved because of the security risk sparked by media publicity.

In an interview to have been published on his return, Prince Harry told Britain’s domestic Press Association news agency his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II broke the news to him and that he was relieved to be sent.

Asked about his reaction, he said: “A bit of excitement, a bit of, ‘phew, finally get the chance to actually do the soldiering I wanted to do from ever since I joined’.”

But he said most of his friends did not know “for the obvious reasons” of security.—AFP