Five people were killed and 13 were wounded on Saturday when suspected Taliban fighters ambushed a convoy of Afghan government military vehicles in the restive southern province of Kandahar, an official said. "Three Taliban were killed and four of them were wounded in the clash that lasted for 50 minutes," said Khali Pashtuna, a spokesman for the provincial governor. He said two government fighters were killed and nine others were wounded. About 40 Taliban fighters had attacked the vehicles, which were carrying 13 soldiers near the district of Khakraiz, Mr. Pashtuna said. About 70 people have been killed or wounded by fighting in the past two weeks in the Kandahar region, once a stronghold of the country’s former Taliban rulers. Afghanistan has had a fresh wave of violence since August, in which more than 450 people have been killed and scores wounded, mostly in the southern and eastern areas. Militants, civilians, aid workers, Afghan troops and more than a dozen foreign soldiers have been among those killed.
| I'm still having trouble with this concept of lumping dead bad guys in with their intended victims when corpse counting. Was it up to me, I'd say they don't count, or that they should go onto a separate list, which would be regarded as a cause for rejoicing. NYT's headline sez five were killed, but three of them were attackers. To me, that means two people were killed, at a cost to the enemy of three deaders. |
Separately, state-run media reported Saturday that at least 16 children had died in an outbreak of whooping cough in a remote part of Afghanistan. The deaths over the past five days in the Khwahan District of northern Badakhshan Province came after snow and freezing weather. |