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| Afghanistan |
| Afghanistan bombing kills three coalition troops, local contractor |
| 2008-09-10 |
| Three US-led coalition troops and an Afghan working with them were killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan on Tuesday as government officials said that roughly 40 rebels, some of them foreigners, died in air strikes. The fresh bloodshed comes as US President George W. Bush announced extra troops for Afghanistan's fight against a rising tide of extremism and the Afghan and Pakistan leaders pledged to stand together against terrorism. The soldiers were killed in the east of Afghanistan by an improvised explosive device (IED) of the type regularly used by Taliban and other militants. The US-led coalition did not give the nationalities of the troops but most international soldiers in the east are American nationals. "Three coalition service members and one local-national contractor were killed today during an IED attack in eastern Afghanistan," the force said. The new deaths raise to 201 the number of international soldiers to die in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP tally based on official statements. An Afghan soldier was killed separately by a remote-controlled bomb that had been fixed to a bicycle in the southern city of Kandahar, the Defense Ministry said. "One military policeman in the vehicle was martyred and two others were wounded," spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP. Meanwhile, in the southern Uruzgan Province, troops were tipped off about a Taliban gathering on the outskirts of the town of Tirin Kot and sent in a strike early Tuesday, provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat said. "The coalition forces bombed them and killed 16 Taliban and wounded another nine," Himat said. Officials believed 50 rebels may have been killed or wounded but had only recovered 16 bodies, another official said. And late Monday aircraft bombed a group of Taliban militants who had attacked a district center in eastern Paktia Province, a spokesman for the provincial government told AFP. "Twelve Taliban were killed in the NATO air strike. Nine of them are Chechens and three are Afghans and Pakistanis," the spokesman said. US and other generals leading the battle against insurgents say there are an increasing number of foreign Islamists, including Arabs and Central Asians, involved in the fighting. Clashes are meanwhile claiming the lives of an increasing number of civilians, with those killed in action by international troops of particular concern to the government, which needs public goodwill in its battle against the Islamists. Meanwhile, NATO-led planes mistakenly bombed a house in a weapons malfunction in Afghanistan Tuesday, killing two civilians, the force said, amid concern about the number of Afghans being killed in military action. Another 10 civilians were wounded when the weapon missed its target in the eastern province of Khost, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement. "An air-launched weapon dropped from an ISAF aircraft today in Khost has accidentally killed two civilians and wounded up to 10 others," the statement added. ISAF forces on the ground had called in an air strike to help attack militants when the mishap occurred, it said. "When released, the weapon suffered a serious malfunction and missed its intended target by more than 2.5 kilometers impacting on a qalat [residential compound]," the statement said. |
| Posted by:Fred |