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 said Thursday.
The 23-year-old prince, an officer in the Household Cavalry regiment, has spent the past 10 weeks secretly serving in the volatile southern 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 to prevent details reaching insurgents and endangering the prince and his comrades.
But the arrangement broke down after news was leaked out on the US website, the Drudge Report, which said that the Australian magazine New Idea and the German tabloid Bild were the first to break a world embargo.
The Drudge Report site later dropped mention to Bild and New Idea, claiming the exclusive as their own.
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.
British political and military reaction to Harry's deployment was unanimous in praise, as pre-prepared interviews with the prince revealed he joked about his nickname -- "bullet magnet" -- with Gurkha colleagues.
He also talked of life on the front line, including spending Christmas Day in a former Taliban madrassa peppered with bullet holes eating scrawny chickens slaughtered with the Gurkhas fearsome kukri knives instead of festive turkey.
To one question about what his mother would think, he replied: "Hopefully she would be proud."
He also said he hoped the British public reaction to his deployment would be positive and rounded on some commentators who branded him a coward for not going to Iraq, saying, "hopefully, they'll eat their words."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown described Harry as an "exemplary soldier (who) is serving with dedication in the finest tradition of our armed forces."
"The whole of Britain will be proud of the outstanding service he is giving," he added, in comments echoed by all the main political parties and the Defence Secretary Des Browne.
The secrecy deal was arranged after Harry's planned tour to Iraq last year had to be shelved because of the security risk sparked by media publicity.
In an interview to have been published on his return, Harry told Britain's domestic Press Association news agency his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II broke the news to him about Afghanistan.
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'."
The British Army's most senior officer, Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, described Harry as a "credit to the nation" but slammed the premature publication of news about the deployment.
"I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us," he said.
Dannatt said the last two months had shown it was "perfectly possible" for Prince Harry to serve in the same fashion as other army officers of his rank and experience.
"His conduct on operations in Afghanistan has been exemplary," he said. "He has been fully involved in operations and has run the same risks as everyone else in his battlegroup."
Dannatt said he had decided to deploy Harry in Afghanistan because the news blackout agreement with the media had made the risk "manageable" but said no decision had yet been taken as to whether he would remain there.
The prince, who is third in line to the throne and had considered quitting after the Iraq decision, retrained as a battlefield air controller, known as a JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller), to go to Afghanistan.
He flew out on December 14 and spent several weeks working in Garmsir, in the far south of Helmand province, operating just 500 metres from front-line Taliban positions.
He has since left Garmsir to work in another part of Helmand, although the details cannot be reported for security reasons.
