Eight US soldiers killed in Afghan blasts
AFGHANISTAN: Eight soldiers killed in a bombing in southern
Afghanistan were Americans, the Pentagon confirmed, in one of the worst
single incidents in recent months.
Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said the soldiers were killed
by two successive blasts on Thursday in the same location in Shorabak
district in Kandahar province. Kandahar is the birthplace of the
Taliban, and fighting there in the coming months is likely to prove a
key test of foreign forces’ ability to hold ground in the south taken
from insurgents last year after a troop surge.
Local border police commander Tafseer Khan Khogyani said the attack,
which also killed two Afghan policemen, took place as coalition and
Afghan forces were on patrol about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the
Pakistan border.
“As they approached a container, explosives that had been placed
inside went off, causing a huge explosion,” he said. Kandahar border
police chief General Abdul Razeq said that the container was used as an
ammunition store by Taliban fighters smuggling weapons across the border
from Pakistan.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the blast, which was
initially announced by the NATO-led International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF). The bombing brings to 199 the number of foreign troops who
have been killed in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP tally
based on that kept by the independent website iCasualties.org.
Of those, 148 were from the United States. The total international
force death toll for last year was 711.
The blast caused ISAF’s highest death toll in a single incident since
April 27, when nine Americans eight troops and a contractor were killed
by an Afghan officer who opened fire at a Kabul military training
centre.
It also brought the death toll of foreign troops in a single day to
nine earlier Thursday, a NATO helicopter crashed in a mountainous area
of eastern Afghanistan, killing one.
There are around 130,000 ISAF service personnel in the war-torn
country, around 90,000 of whom are from the United States.
Much of Afghanistan’s worst fighting takes place in the south of the
country, particularly in the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand which
border Pakistani areas where insurgents have hideouts. While
international forces insist they have been taking the fight to
insurgents throughout the winter, the Taliban announced the start of
their spring fighting season at the end of April.
The commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, US General David
Petraeus, warned in a memo released Saturday that they could face tough
times ahead.
KABUL, Friday, AFP |