A bomb attack on allied forces in Afghanistan on Tuesday marked the first time the Taliban has been able to effectively strike the heavily armored Mastiff personnel carrier, British officials said.

“It’s the first time personnel inside a Mastiff have been killed by an IED [improvised explosive device],” a Ministry of Defense official said.

Based on the Cougar mine-resistant vehicle made by U.S. defense giant General Dynamics, the Mastiff is designed specifically to protect soldiers from improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades, the firm says on its website.

The company says the 21-ton Cougar vehicle has “withstood literally thousands of IED/landmine attacks” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A General Dynamics spokesman in the U.S. declined to comment, saying he would defer to Britain's defense ministry.

The ministry declined to give details of the incident, though it said in a statement that the three British soldiers who were killed were inside the vehicle and that they "received immediate medical attention" and were airlifted to a military hospital "but could not be saved."

Reuters file

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron walks past Mastiff armored vehicles at Camp Bastion, outside Lashkar Gah, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in December 2012.

Nine Afghans also died in the blast, and six other British soldiers were wounded, according to Reuters. The military has not given specifics about where the Afghans and other soldiers were in relation to the 10-person vehicle.

The attack in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province came just two days after the Taliban announced the start of its annual spring offensive, which it said would be “monumental.”

Gen. Richard Dannatt, former head of the British Army, told BBC's Radio 4 that the incident was a matter of “invention and counter-invention” as the Taliban tries to stay ahead of the armoring technologies of the military.

"The Taliban have found a way of countering the protective qualities and characteristics of the Mastiff,” he told Radio 4.

"It would seem that this was an extremely large bomb that was so powerful that actually it was able to cause fatalities within the vehicle itself. I've not seen a technical report, but my understanding in talking to the Ministry of Defense is that in all probability it was a very large device in terms of the amount of explosive and it may well have physically lifted up the vehicle and possibly even turned it over."

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

The Taliban took credit for the attack in a statement, adding: "It was a very heavy explosion and we have destroyed their tank."

NP Aerospace, the British company that outfits the Mastiff once it is shipped from the U.S., declined to comment on the vehicle’s capabilities.

“All our sympathy and condolences go to the families and friends of the soldiers tragically killed,” the company said through a spokesman.

The soldiers killed were all from the Royal Highlands Fusiliers, 2^nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said in an interview with Britain’s Sky News that the incident points to the danger even as British involvement in the war winds down.

“That process of withdrawal in itself is going to be extremely dangerous and will have to be extraordinarily well managed,” Salmond said. “The most dangerous thing in terms of our troops in Afghanistan has been the roadside devices affecting the armored vehicles. The soldiers obviously knew the risk they were running, but that doesn't make it any easier for the families or indeed for the rest of the regiment.”

NBC News' Peter Jeary and Akbar Shinwari contributed to this report.

Related:

• Taliban marks start of offensive with deadly attack
• Full Afghanistan coverage from NBC News

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” who led a conservative resurgence in her home country and forged a legendary partnership with President Ronald Reagan, died Monday following a stroke. She was 87.

Thatcher led Britain from 1979 to 1990, the first and only woman to hold the job and longest-serving prime minister of the postwar era. 

“Margaret Thatcher didn’t just lead our country — she saved our country,” Prime Minister David Cameron said. “Margaret Thatcher took a country that was on its knees and made Britain stand tall again.”

Queen Elizabeth II planned to send a private message of sympathy to the family, said a statement from Buckingham Palace, where the Union Jack was lowered to half-staff. Cameron called Parliament back for a special session Wednesday to pay tribute.

Slideshow: The life and times of Margaret Thatcher

John Minihan / Getty Images

A pioneer for her sex, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of the United Kingdom for almost 12 years. Take a look back at her life and career.

Launch slideshow

President Barack Obama hailed Thatcher as an exemplar of British strength and resolve and a role model for young women. Invoking Thatcher’s friendship with Reagan, Obama said that she reminded the world “that we are not simply carried along by the currents of history — we can shape them with moral conviction, unyielding courage and iron will.”

‘True force of nature’: World reacts to Thatcher's death

A grocer’s daughter with a sharp tongue and a no-nonsense style, Thatcher was elected to Parliament at age 34 and climbed the Conservative Party ladder. She became its leader at age 50 and swept into 10 Downing St. four years later.

The year she took office as prime minister, Thatcher took note of her place in history: “Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”

Ten years earlier, she had predicted that no woman in her time would hold the job of prime minister. She held it for 11 years, longer than Winston Churchill or any other British leader of her century.

Thatcher transformed the British economy and took on its welfare state and powerful unions. Her government cut, closed or privatized state-owned industries, notably struggling steel plants and coal mines, and radically cut taxes and public spending — strong medicine, she conceded, but precisely what was needed to restart a stagnant nation.

“The problem with socialism,” she once said, “is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

In 1980, when fellow conservatives were fretting that her tough, anti-inflation economic policy was driving up unemployment, she addressed the prospect of whether she would make a political U-turn: “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”

Under her leadership, Britain fought and won a war with Argentina for the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean — determined to preserve one of the last outposts of the British empire.

Thatcher’s military worries became focused on a speck of land halfway around the world in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falklands, a British archipelago. After American mediation attempts failed, Thatcher decided to retake the islands, a feat accomplished in a few weeks. The war was a huge boost to Thatcher’s popularity.

An estimated 650 Argentinians and 255 Britons were killed in the war. Argentina still asserts a claim to the islands, but the people there overwhelmingly voted last month to remain under British control. One islander told Reuters on Monday that Thatcher was “our Winston Churchill.”

Thatcher survived an assassination attempt when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded at a Conservative Party conference in the British city of Brighton in 1984, killing five people and injuring a cabinet minister, among others. Thatcher gave the keynote speech hours later and said: “This attack has failed. All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.”

She took on the British coal industry, nationalized and seen as politically untouchable. The coal union had brought down the government of another conservative, Edward Heath, with a strike a decade earlier, and coal workers walked off the job again in 1984 after the Thatcher government announced job cuts.

During the strike, she told the House of Commons: “We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.”

Thatcher, anticipating the confrontation, had stockpiled coal to keep the country’s energy supply humming. The strike collapsed in March 1985.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, of the Labour Party, told Sky News on Monday that Thatcher’s economic regime was to blame for many of the problems that Britain still faces.

“She created today’s housing crisis. She created the banking crisis. And she created the benefits crisis,” he said. “In actual fact, every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact that she was fundamentally wrong.”

Thatcher had a well-known friendship with Reagan during his two terms as president in the 1980s. They shared an allegiance to free-market principles and opposition to the Soviet Union.

Thatcher recalled in her memoir, “The Downing Street Years,” that she met Reagan in 1975, when she led the political opposition in Britain and Reagan was the ascendant governor of California. She said that she was won over by his “warmth, charm and complete lack of affectation — qualities which never altered in the years of leadership which lay ahead.”

When Reagan died, in 2004, Thatcher delivered a recorded eulogy and said: “We have lost a great president, a great American and a great man. And I have lost a dear friend.”

Nancy Reagan on Monday said the world had lost “a true champion of freedom and democracy.” She said that Thatcher and her late husband had a strong personal friendship.

“From the very beginning, the first time they met,” Nancy Reagan said in a telephone interview on the MSNBC program “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” “She was at the first state dinner we had at the White House, and the last state dinner was for her.”

Thatcher was forced out of office by her own party in 1990, unhappy with some of her policies. Her reduction of British social spending also earned her the scorn of some pop culture figures and helped spawn the British punk movement. Billy Bragg and Sinead O’Connor lashed out in song, and Morrissey recorded a track called “Margaret on the Guillotine.”

Meryl Streep, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of the former prime minister in “The Iron Lady,” said that Thatcher had endured hatred and ridicule unprecedented for “a public figure who was not a mass murderer.” While praising her conviction, however, Streep suggested that Thatcher had contributed to a widening income gap.

“Her hard-nosed fiscal measures took a toll on the poor, and her hands-off approach to financial regulation led to great wealth for others,” Streep said in a statement. She said that she would leave history to settle the matter of Thatcher’s greatness.

Thatcher played polarizing role in pop culture

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said Monday that Thatcher’s views had been vindicated — on unions, on communism and on the movement toward European political integration, of which she was extremely skeptical and urged Britain to stay out.

“The country is deeply in her debt,” Johnson said. “Her memory will live long after the world has forgotten the grey suits of today’s politics.”

Her successor as prime minister, John Major, said that Thatcher’s economic reforms and the British victory in the Falklands War “elevated her above normal politics, and may not have been achieved under any other leader.”

Former President George W. Bush said that Thatcher guided Britain with confidence and clarity.

“Prime Minister Thatcher is a great example of strength and character, and a great ally who strengthened the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States,” he said in a statement.

Thatcher’s daughter said in 2008 that she had been suffering from dementia for eight years, and had to be reminded that her husband was dead.

Margaret Hilda Roberts was born Oct. 13, 1925. At the hand of her grocer father, she later said, she learned both thrift and capitalist principles.

“Before I read a line from the great liberal economists,” she wrote, “I knew from my father’s accounts that the free market was like a vast sensitive nervous system, responding to events and signals all over the world to meet the ever-changing needs of peoples in different countries, from different classes, of different religions, with a kind of benign indifference to their status.”

Cameron’s office said that Thatcher would receive a ceremonial funeral with military honors at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 8, 2013 8:00 AM EDT

Matthew Lloyd / Getty Images, file

London mayor Boris Johnson (right) and Irvine Sellar, developer of the new skyscraper The Shard, cut a ribbon.

LONDON -- He is the goofy London mayor whose jovial self-deprecation and quick intellect have rescued him from a string of political missteps and personal indignities. But floppy-haired Boris Johnson’s happy-go-lucky reputation took a battering this week, just as he revealed his ambition to one day become Britain’s prime minister.

New York-born Johnson -- memorably caught on camera dangling from a broken zip-wire during the London Olympics -- was accused of being a “nasty piece of work” in a train-wreck television interview that surfaced a darker side to his persona.

The mayor was asked about a number of embarrassing episodes in his past including being fired from his former job as a reporter with The Times newspaper for making up a quote, losing his opposition cabinet role after lying to his Conservative party leader about an affair and the accusation that he agreed to provide a reporter’s address to his friend, a convicted fraudster, so the journalist could be beaten up.

There were no new revelations in Sunday’s interview, which was hardly in the mold of Frost vs Nixon. But the feline approach of BBC presenter Eddie Mair exposed a testy, evasive side to Johnson that observers say has undermined his affable public image.

“What’s remarkable is not that the interview happened but the fact that it hasn’t happened before,” said Johnson’s biographer, Sonia Purnell.

“He has always used his jovial fellow act and has never really been challenged like that in an interview until now.

“It is true that he is very charismatic, very clever and engaging. But there is a dark side to his character. He has a ferocious temper and he bears grudges.”

The clash was in stark contrast to Johnson’s winning encounter on “Late Show with David Letterman” last year, when he entertained the studio audience and shrugged the gibe that he cut his own hair.

It has sparked a debate in Britain about whether the mayor, a keen cyclist and classical scholar whose full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson -- can still be taken seriously as a contender to replace David Cameron as prime minister and leader of his Conservative party.

Mair teased Johnson about his repeated refusal to admit that he harbors ambitions to replace Cameron, with whom he has a mild personal rivalry that dates back to their shared time at Eton, Britain’s most elite private school.

Jan Kruger / Getty Images, file

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and Mayor of London Boris Johnson warm up for a tennis match during the London Olympics.

“What should viewers make of your inability to give a straight answer to a straight question?" asked Mair, adding: “You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?”

An online Guardian newspaper poll found 62 percent of its readers thought Johnson could no longer be considered a candidate for Britain’s top job. The interview “was inevitably described as a car crash, but in the case of Johnson, it was more of a bicycle crash: spokes all over the road, wheels mangled and a reputation badly dented,” wrote the newspaper’s veteran political editor, Patrick Wintour.

Purnell added: “I think it left a tidemark in people’s minds about Boris’s character.”

However, conservative commentator Toby Young said Johnson’s leadership prospects remain unchanged. “It's an elementary rule of politics that if you have any skeletons lurking in your closet that are likely to make an appearance during an election campaign, better to get them out in the open now,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “Not only will it rob them of their bad juju, it will enable his supporters to claim -- yet again -- that he's popular in spite of his character flaws, not because the public isn't aware of them.”

Matthew Norman, in The Independent, asked: “Boris would be a disastrous PM. So why do I quite like the idea?” He wrote: “Life for diarists and political pundits would improve immeasurably, which strikes me as a very reasonable price to pay for the national shame of having Boris Johnson as prime minister.”

Johnson, 48, has long been a grassroots favorite to lead the Conservatives if Cameron stood down or lost office. However, to be prime minister he would first need to stand again for election to the House of Commons, which he quit in 2008 to run to be mayor of London. He is currently serving his second four-year term and has remained coy about whether he will quit early and return to parliament.

His mix of conservative economics and liberal social values -- he supports gay marriage and an amnesty for immigrants -- helped secure his election in a city long dominated by left-of-center politics, but it may not sit well with the U.K.-wide Conservative party.

His personal morality may also hinder his progress: He has acknowledged a number of affairs and has been likened to Italy’s serial philanderer and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi by satirical magazine editor Ian Hislop.

Then there is Johnson’s apparent lack of attention to detail. Purnell, who worked alongside him in the Brussels bureau of the Daily Telegraph, said: “Some of the things he wrote were on the limits of the truth. He was, at best, creative.”

Max Hastings, a former editor of Johnson's during his time as a journalist, described Johnson as "utterly chaotic," adding: "Supposing he became prime minister, the idea of Boris Johnson's finger on the nuclear button ... one day he would get it mixed up with the one to call the maid."

However, there remains a lot of affection for a man whose unvarnished approach is a breath of political fresh air.

“He is a sunshine politician and people like that,” said Ross Lydall, chief news correspondent of London’s Evening Standard newspaper, which supports Johnson.

“The way he has improved life for cyclists in London is remarkable -- as a cyclist myself, it certainly puts a smile on my face. He represents a sense of optimism compared to the old, miserable municipal politics of London.”

STANLEY, Falkland Islands -- Residents of the Falkland Islands voted almost unanimously to stay under British rule in a referendum aimed at winning global sympathy as Argentina intensifies its sovereignty claim, results showed on Monday.

The official count showed 99.8 percent of islanders voted in favor of remaining a British Overseas Territory in the two-day referendum, which was rejected by Argentina as a meaningless publicity stunt. Only three "no" votes were cast.

"Surely this must be the strongest message we can get out to the world," said Roger Edwards, one of the Falklands assembly's eight elected members.

"(The message is) that we are content, that we wish to retain the status quo ... with the right to determine our own future and not become a colony of Argentina."

Javier Lizon / EPA

Falkland Islanders celebrate in Port Stanley on Monday. Of the 1,517 ballots cast, just three were against the motion to remain a British overseas territory.

Pro-British feeling is running high in the barren and blustery islands that lie off the tip of Patagonia, and turnout was 92 percent among the 1,649 Falklands-born and long-term residents registered to vote.

Three decades since Argentina and Britain went to war over the far-flung South Atlantic archipelago, residents have been perturbed by Argentina's increasingly vocal claim over the Malvinas -- as the islands are called in Spanish.

Local politicians hope the resounding "yes" vote will help them lobby support abroad, for example in the United States, which has a neutral position on the sovereignty issue.

"We're never going to change Argentina's claim and point of view, but I believe there are an awful lot of countries out there that are sitting on the fence. ... This is going to show them quite clearly what the people think," Edwards added.

'We are British'
The mood was festive as islanders lined up in the cold to vote in the low-key island capital of Stanley during voting, some wearing novelty outfits made from the red, white and blue Union Jack flag.

"We are British, and that's the way we want to stay," said Barry Nielsen, who wore a Union Jack hat to cast his ballot at the town hall polling station in Stanley, where most of the roughly 2,500 islanders live.

Argentina's fiery left-leaning president, Cristina Fernandez, has piled pressure on Britain to negotiate the sovereignty of the islands, something London refuses to do unless the islanders request talks.

Government officials in Buenos Aires questioned the referendum's legitimacy. They say the sovereignty dispute must be resolved between Britain and Argentina and cite U.N. resolutions calling on London to sit down for talks.

Argentina has claimed the islands since 1833, saying it inherited them from the Spanish on independence and that Britain expelled an Argentine population.

Javier Lizon / EPA

A man wearing a Union flag suit dances as he casts his vote in the referendum to decide if the Falkland Islands would remain a British territory.

Falkland islanders, who are enjoying an economic boom thanks partly to the sale of oil and natural gas exploration licenses, say they do not expect Monday's result to sway Argentina.

"Argentina's stance on the Falklands will stay the same," said Stanley resident Craig Paice, wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Our Islands, Our Decision" as he waited to vote on Monday.

"But hopefully the world will now listen and know the people of the Falkland Islands have a voice."

Related:

Argentina slams Olympic ad that sparked row with Britain

UK accuses Argentina of 'threats' and 'harassment' over Falklands

From Jan. 2012: Will Prince William's tour of duty reignite simmering Falklands dispute?

Health Protection Agency via AP

A British Health Protection Agency photo shows an electron microscope image of a coronavirus, part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. This one was first identified last year in the Middle East. A patient in Britain has died after being treated for the virus. So far 12 people have been diagnosed and six have perished.

LONDON -- A patient being treated for a mysterious SARS-like virus has died, a British hospital said Tuesday.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, said the coronavirus victim was also being treated for "a long-term, complex unrelated health problem" and already had a compromised immune system.

A total of 12 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the disease, six of whom have died.

The virus was first identified last year in the Middle East. Most of those infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan, but the person who just died is believed to have caught it from a relative in Britain, where there have been four confirmed cases.

The new coronavirus is part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. In 2003, a global outbreak of SARS killed about 800 people worldwide.

Health experts still aren't sure exactly how humans are being infected. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus and scientists are considering whether bats or other animals like goats or camels are a possible source of infection.

Britain's Health Protection Agency has said while it appears the virus can spread from person to person, "the risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low."

Officials at the World Health Organization said the new virus has probably already spread between humans in some instances. In Saudi Arabia last year, four members of the same family fell ill and two died. And in a cluster of about a dozen people in Jordan, the virus may have spread at a hospital's intensive care unit.

Related: 

New virus passed person-to-person in Britain, officials say

An investigation has identified a French meat-processing firm as a likely culprit in the horsemeat scandal that has enraged consumers across Europe and implicated traders and abattoirs from Cyprus to Romania.

Separately, British police investigating alleged mislabeling of beef products arrested three people on Thursday at facilities in Wales and Yorkshire that had handled horsemeat and were raided by police earlier, British media reported.

No further details on the British arrests were immediately available.

The French probe into how horsemeat found its way into ready meals sold across Europe found that the Spanghero firm labelled meat as beef when it knew what it was processing may have been horse, the government said on Thursday.

Spanghero, based in the town of Castelnaudary near Toulouse in southwest France, could have its operating license revoked and will face legal action if the suspicions are confirmed, France's consumer affairs and farm ministers told a news conference.

"It would seem that the first agent in this chain to label the meat 'beef' was indeed Spanghero," Consumer Affairs Minister Benoit Hamon said. "This was either a very big mistake or a deception for profit."

There was no indication that a Romanian firm supplying meat to Spanghero had mislabeled what was in fact horsemeat, he said, arguing that Spanghero could not have failed to notice the meat it was importing was much cheaper than beef.

"The investigation shows Spanghero knew the meat labelled as beef could be horse. There was a strong suspicion," he said.

Spanghero denied the accusations and said it firmly believed what it was selling was beef. "There is an inquiry under way which will determine whether there was negligence or not," a spokeswoman said.

The privately-owned company, founded by two brothers, sons of 1970s French rugby star Walter Spanghero, produces thousands of tons of processed meat, sold in nondescript blocks, and jars of regional dishes like cassoulet from its premises in Castelnaudary.

Horsemeat profits
The scandal, which has triggered recalls of ready meals and shattered confidence in Europe's vast and complex food industry, erupted last month when tests carried out in Ireland revealed that meat in some "beef" products was up to 100 percent horsemeat.

The British government and the European Union have called for a high-level meeting to investigate, and the issue will be on the agenda of a Feb. 25 farm ministers meeting.

The European Commission has proposed increased DNA-testing of meat products to try to establish the scale of a scandal that has exposed just how many countries a portion of mince may have traveled through before ending up in a frozen lasagna.

EU legislation states that horsemeat can be sold in meat products on the condition it is declared on the label. Member states are responsible for proper enforcement of the rules.

Hamon said the French investigation found that Spanghero had generated a profit of $733,800 over six months by selling cheap horsemeat as beef in a supply chain that reached through 28 companies in 13 countries.

He also wagged his finger at another French firm, Comigel, which used processed meat from Spanghero to make frozen "beef" ready meals, saying it should have noticed when it thawed the meat blocks that they did not look and smell like beef.

Comigel said in a statement it paid market prices for what it thought was beef. It said it had alerted the authorities as soon as it became aware of a problem and had filed a legal complaint as a victim of fraud.

It also said its frozen meat had not been thawed for inspection before entering its factory for cooking, so its staff would not have noticed anything unusual in its appearance or smell.

As regulators across Europe raced to test food products, Britain's Food Standards Agency said six horses slaughtered in Britain that tested positive for the drug phenylbutazone were exported to France and may have entered the human food chain.

Phenylbutazone, known as bute, is an anti-inflammatory painkiller for sporting horses which is banned for animals intended for human consumption as it is potentially harmful.

Asda, one of Britain's biggest supermarkets, said it was recalling its beef bolognese sauce after a preliminary test result suggested the presence of horse DNA in the product.

Related:

European horsemeat scandal spreads amid fears harmful drug entered human food chain