Troops have been forced to leave live Taliban bombs outside their bases for weeks because there were no Army explosive experts to clear them.
Secret documents seen by the Sunday Mirror say that the deadly devices were left in the ground so long that rebel fighters were able to dig them up and place them elsewhere to kill other soldiers.
Frontline troops do not have the expertise to diffuse improvised explosive devices and have to rely on specialist bomb experts.
But shortages in the experts - ammunition technical officers - meant bombs simply had to be marked and left in the ground.
Senior officers warned military chiefs that the shortages of ATOs was putting lives at risk last July.
But it took defence chiefs seven months to send an extra 300 bomb experts to Helmand amid wrangles from the Treasury.
Meanwhile one Royal Marine unit suffered nine dead and 52 wounded in six months in 300 separate IED attacks.
Last night a senior military source said: "You need an expert to defuse these devices. They are highly sophisticated and often boobytrapped. For them to be left in the ground, then dug up by the Taliban and re-laid to kill more troops is a scandal."
Last night defence sources said more ATOs had now been sent to southern Afghanistan.
