After claiming to have killed 25 fighters in Afghanistan, Prince Harry received criticism from UK military officials and the Taliban.

 When Prince Harry claimed in his book that he killed 25 Taliban members while serving with the British Army in Afghanistan, he came under fire from some British security and military officials as well as an enraged rebuttal from the Taliban.

According to the British tabloid The Daily Telegraph, which claimed to have gotten a copy of the Spanish edition of the book before its scheduled official release on Tuesday, January 10, Harry revealed the amount in his upcoming autobiography "Spare."

"25 is my number. It's not a number that makes me happy, but it also doesn't make me feel embarrassed," Harry reportedly writes. In another passage, he is cited as saying that Taliban rebels are more like "chess pieces" that have been removed from the board than actual humans.

CNN has asked the publisher, Penguin Random House, for an advance copy of the book but has not yet seen one. On Thursday, many UK media sites received copies in Spanish and used translated passages.

Members of the military community responded angrily to the prince's remarks, warning that they would endanger his safety and damage the prestige of the British Army.

Former British Ambassador to the United States Kim Darroch, who served in that capacity from 2016 to 2019, claimed to have counselled Harry against making the words in a statement to Sky News. They also "tarnished" Colonel Richard Kemp's reputation and "unjustly" painted the British Army in an unfavourable way, the retired British army officer claimed to the same network.

Kemp predicted that the 25-person death toll "would have re-energised those people who desire him harm." Let's hope they fail, and I'm sure he has decent security, but that's one issue.

The other issue I had with his remarks was that, contrary to what he said, he and other soldiers had been taught by the British Army to view their adversaries as less than human, like pieces on a chessboard that might be removed. The exact opposite is true," he continued.

The Taliban, who are again in control and are once more conducting a savage crackdown against women's rights after being out of power for 20 years, reacted vehemently to Harry's remarks as well.

Dear Harry! The ones you killed weren't chess pieces; they were people with waiting families, according to Anas Haqqani, who serves as an acting assistant to the interior minister and is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who founded the Haqqani network.

On April 9, 2017, Prince William and Prince Harry make their way to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in Vimy, France.

Reports on Harry's new book include details concerning William's alleged attack, his admission of using drugs, and his worries about Camilla. "Among the murders of Afghans, not many have the decency to expose their conscience and confess to their war crimes," he continued.

Prince Harry spent ten years in the British Army. He served in Afghanistan for two deployments, the first from 2007 to 2008 and the second from 2012 to 2013. He qualified as an Apache Aircraft commander in 2011 after achieving the rank of captain. In the Army, he was known as Captain Harry Wales, who left the army in 2015.

Harry recalled watching back footage of each "kill" from the Apache helicopter's nose-mounted camera after returning to base while serving with the British Army in Afghanistan, the Telegraph claimed.

Ben McBean, a former Royal Marine with whom Harry fought in Afghanistan, also tweeted on Thursday, "Love you #PrinceHarry but you need to shut up! Makes you question about the company he keeps. If it were nice people, someone would have told him to stop by now.

It's unclear if McBean was referring particularly to Harry's remarks on his time in the military or more broadly to a plethora of other revelations in Harry's memoir that have caused turbulence for Britain's royal family.

Early reports on the book's contents have taken over front pages in the UK and provide a new headache for Prince William and King Charles III, the father of Harry's father.

The assertion that William physically assaulted Harry during an incident in 2019 was perhaps the most shocking discovery to surface. This claim was first reported by The Guardian.