The death of a female Intelligence Corps soldier brings the total number of UK servicewomen killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 to five.

She is also the first British or American woman to die as a result of hostile action in Afghanistan.

A total of 216 British male soldiers and aircrew have lost their lives to bombs, missiles or bullets in the two operational zones, with another 66 dying in accidents or from disease.

However, Britain's female fatalities in forces which include 17,600 women of all ranks across the three services and represent about 9% of the total number in uniform, are dwarfed by America's 98 female combat deaths - all in Iraq so far.

A military source yesterday told The Herald: "The surprising thing is that so few women have been killed so far, given the numbers deployed by the UK and the United States.

"Rules about barring females from combat units are meaningless when there are no front lines and every road journey in either operational theatre carries the risk of booby-traps or ambush.

"As the old soldiers' saying goes: Every man - and woman - is born equal under the 7.62mm gun law."

Despite the United States' prohibition on employing women in direct combat roles in infantry, artillery or tank battalions, most casualties have come from logistics units ambushed while transporting supplies between bases.

Female soldiers are allowed to act as convoy escorts and drivers as well as in units directing traffic.

Women now make up more than 14% of the all-volunteer US forces and 11% of the troops in the two war zones, performing a long list of occupational specialties they were not qualified for or allowed to tackle 50 years ago.

The American mortality rate for all women soldiers stands at 2% of those committed to duty in Iraq.

Most previous female casualties were nurses. Now the female dead include military police, truck drivers, intelligence analysts, helicopter pilots, medics, mechanics, media escorts and kitchen managers.

At least 13 left behind children. More than half were younger than 25.

By comparison, 16 American women were killed in action in the Second World War.

In Vietnam, one woman's life was claimed by enemy fire and just five died in the 1991 Gulf War.

The British operational death toll includes an RAF flight lieutenant, three intelligence corps soldiers and a medic.

Two others have died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds and a third in a road crash in Qatar.

Second Lieutenant Joanna Yorke Dyer, a 24-year-old Intelligence Corps trainee officer from Yeovil, and Private Eleanor Dlugosz, Royal Army Medical Corps, aged 19, from Southampton, died together when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb blast west of Basra on April 5, 2007.

Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott, 34, and intelligence specialist from Ipswich, was one of four UK personnel killed in an attack on a boat patrol on the Shatt al-Arab waterway on November 12, 2006.

Flight Lieutenant Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, aged 32, an RAF flight operations officer, was killed along with four male colleagues when their Lynx helicopter was shot down over Basra on Saturday May 6, 2006. She is the highest-ranking female casualty to date.