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| Afghanistan |
| Two NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan |
| 2007-09-07 |
| Two NATO soldiers were killed in bomb blasts in Afghanistan Thursday while scores of insurgents died in new battles as heavy fighting intensified in the country, military officials said. Several soldiers were also wounded in the two explosions in the south of the country, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said. It did not give the nationalities of its casualties, leaving such announcements for the home nations of the soldiers. The latest deaths came a day after two British soldiers were killed in the southern province of Helmand, where international soldiers are confronting hardcore Taliban and drugs traffickers who are wreaking havoc in the area. Also Thursday, more than 20 insurgents were killed in an eight-hour battle in the southern province of Kandahar that erupted after dozens of militants attacked a patrol, a coalition headed by the United States said separately. The coalition reported earlier Thursday that more than 40 Taliban fighters were killed in a 12-hour battle Wednesday in Kandahar’s Shah Wali Kot district, where rebels have launched several major ambushes in the past few days. A small group of rebels ambushed foreign forces and was later reinforced by about 150 insurgents who fired rocket-propelled grenades and used heavy machine guns, the coalition said in a statement. Most of the rebels were killed by coalition warplanes that pounded their positions in several compounds, it said. Afghanistan’s defence ministry said meanwhile that dozens of Taliban were killed or wounded in fighting with local and foreign forces in the neighbouring province of Helmand, also on Wednesday. The ministry did not give an exact figure for the rebel casualties but said the fighting erupted after Taliban militants attacked the soldiers with heavy weapons. “Responding to the enemy attack, Afghan and coalition troops chased the enemy and called in air support. Dozens of enemy were killed and wounded,” it said in a statement. The fighting took place in Helmand’s Sangin district, where 25 rebels were killed earlier the same day, an Afghan army general said on Wednesday. The latest bloodshed in the insurgency-hit southern desert provinces of Kandahar and Helmand took the rebel toll in recent days to close to 400. NATO leaders, meanwhile, in Ottawa began a meeting Thursday to explore the alliance’s long term strategic objectives and operations, in the country. Officials said that among the issues to be discussed was the military mission in Afghanistan, where three-fourths of the 50,000 troops deployed hail from NATO member countries. |
| Posted by:Fred |