Yelling in Pashto, fruit-sellers flee and exhausted Welsh soldiers drag a victim to safety, blood pouring from the stump of his leg into the straw, mud and chicken droppings of the noisy, smelly market.

But this familiar scene is not taking place in strife-torn Helmand Province: the war in Afghanistan is now being rehearsed in the green English countryside.

The British Army has spent 14 million pounds (23 million dollars) on creating a replica Afghan village to get their soldiers used to life on duty in Helmand before they spend six months serving in the real Afghanistan.

"There's no point investing in something like this unless it's really realistic," said Colonel Richard Westley, the commander of Operational Training Advisory Group (OPTAG), which runs the training course.

"The music, the mosque, chickens round your feet. That could be Sangin or Gereshk market. The hackles go up. You're in Afghanistan, and that's what we want.

"A guy in a black turban pulls up on a motorbike. Who is he? You see the fear on the face of an 18-year-old private from Nottingham.

"But he must be exposed to trauma in training. If not, he will freeze in theatre."

The people sitting around brewing tea, baking bread and smoking water pipes behind the high compound walls are real Afghans, expats recruited to spend two months living as Pashtun villagers in rural Norfolk, eastern England.

Elders sit in discussion; youngsters wheel about on bicycles while market traders peddle their goods. Others stay indoors or hang around on corners.

It is a far cry from the old facility at the British Army's Stanford Training Area: a 1980s Northern Irish village later adapted to resemble Bosnia, then dressed up as Afghanistan.

"The whole village is very similar and we try to put the life in it," said Fazel Beria, who recruits the expats, mainly from London.

"The important thing for the Afghans here is that the that lives of Afghans will be saved if British soldiers know about Afghan culture, way of life and religion," he told AFP.

In one compound, troops with landmine detectors act on information and check out reports of a bomb-making facility. Soldiers find a potential explosive device and call in expert back-up.

In another, a young officer sits down on the rugs for a "shura" council with village elders twice his age.

Speaking through an interpreter, he patiently listens to their complaints about damage to a well but explains that he cannot simply give out the 500 dollars they need -- and the Taliban must been flushed from the village first.

"Do you take your boots off? Do you eat the food you're offered? You don't want your officers being ill for four days afterwards," one Afghanistan veteran said.

Sheltering from the rain, OPTAG Colour Sergeant Jimmy Lynas watches from a shop front as soldiers from 1st Battalion the Royal Welsh patrol through.

"The local nationals bring the village to life," he told AFP as he listened in on the Pashto market patter.

"They cook their own food, so the smells of the village are the same. They're burning fires, running round on motorbikes, which can only make our training better."

Simon Lloyd, commander of the eastern Defence Training Estates, also watches on.

"We've put a phenomenal amount of effort in to make this as realistic as we possibly can, to train the soldiers to the very highest possible level," he explains.

"There are 250,000 props out there, including the telegraph poles, the meat, the sandals.

"We're trying to take the shock of being in theatre away from the troops so that when they go out into Afghanistan they realise they have been through the experience before. They can concentrate on getting the results of the patrol right. The aura of the place around them won't affect them."

The suicide bomber attacks, sending the market into chaos.

Even the injured Afghans being evacuated to safety are played by real amputees.

"We don't just leave the locals," said Lynas.

"We need to look after them as well. That's what this war's about."

Britain has 8,300 troops in Afghanistan, rising to 9,000 for the August elections. Some 166 British troops have died since operations against the Taliban extremists began in October 2001.

The first troops to go through the week-long training at the new facility will deploy to Afghanistan in a few months' time.

Colonel Westley stresses the whole project is about saving lives.

"What price on our human treasure?" he said.

"If the enemy is using a new tactic or piece of equipment, and I don't know about it in minutes, people will die."

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