Bombs kill three Canadian soldiers, five Afghans
Pastor Dale Morgan
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Thursday June 21, 3:06 AM
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Bombs kill three Canadian soldiers, five Afghans*
A series of roadside bombings in Afghanistan Wednesday killed eight
people, including three Canadian soldiers, in new attacks linked to an
intensified Taliban insurgency.
A district chief in southern Kandahar province said meanwhile police had
killed 21 rebels who attacked late Tuesday.
The three Canadians with the NATO-led International Security Assistance
Force were killed in the volatile south of the country when a bomb tore
through their vehicle, a commander said in Kandahar.
"At the time, they were travelling in a small all-terrain vehicle,"
Brigadier General Tim Grant said.
Canada has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda
insurgents. Since 2002, 60 of its soldiers and one diplomat have now
been killed in attacks and roadside bomb blasts.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Yousuf Ahmadi, said insurgents had blown up
a foreign forces' vehicle in the province of Helmand. Several of the
troops were dead, he claimed. although most Canadian soldiers are in
Kandahar.
Ninety-one foreign troops have now died in Afghanistan this year, most
of them in combat and about half of them from the United States which
has the most soldiers in the international operation in Afghanistan.
Another bomb blew up a police vehicle in the eastern province of Khost,
killing Qalandar district police chief Ali Mohammad and one of his men,
a spokesman for the provincial governor told AFP.
In the southern province of Zabul, a bomb ripped into the vehicle of
US-based private security company USPI, killing two guards and wounding
a third, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Jalani said.
Another bomb exploded on a road in Ghazni province and killed a man who
was cycling home after buying groceries, a district governor said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast but said it had struck
a police vehicle.
The hardliners rely on bombs, including suicide blasts, in their fight
against the government and its allies. The military says this is a sign
of the rebels' weakness and inability to fight conventional warfare.
Taliban overran a district in Kandahar province late Monday, forcing the
small police force there to flee, but they were removed less than 24
hours later.
They took another Kandahar district Tuesday and police said Wednesday
they were planning an operation to remove them with ISAF's help.
In another violent incident, a man opened fire on worshippers in a
mosque in Khost during evening prayers Tuesday, killing three people and
wounding four others, police said Wednesday.
Provincial police spokesman Wazir Badshah said the reason for the attack
was not clear but the gunman, who escaped, did not seem to have links
with militants.
The governor of eastern Nangarhar province told reporters meanwhile that
authorities were holding two men who had confessed to being would-be
suicide bombers who had been trained in Pakistan.
"They have confessed that I was their target," governor Gul Agha Shirzay
said.