3 British troops killed in southern Afghanistan

By Amir Shah, Associated Press –

August 7, 2009

KABUL –

Three British paratroopers were killed in a Taliban attack on their patrol in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday, raising the number of international troops slain in the first week of August to 18.

NATO and the British government said the soldiers' armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb north of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province on Thursday before insurgents opened fire. The soldiers fired back, but the three were killed.

Attacks killed at least 75 troops from the U.S. and other international military forces in July, the highest death toll for a single month since 2001, according to military reports.

Thousands of additional U.S. Marines have been deployed to southern Afghanistan — the Taliban's heartland — in an attempt to reverse the Taliban gains.

NATO's new secretary-general said the alliance need more troops in Afghanistan if the mission is to be successful.

Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the BBC from Afghanistan that NATO progress in fighting the Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan this summer has come because troop levels in the region have increased.

U.S. officials have said that commanders are likely to ask for more troops after they complete a report on how to turn the war in Afghanistan around.

Afghan officials said roadside bombs had killed five policemen and an Afghan guard in the south, the center of the Taliban-led (resistance to NATO forces), where thousands of new U.S. and British forces are trying to secure roads and population centers.

The policemen were killed when their vehicle hit a buried bomb in Kandahar's Arghandab district late Thursday, said Abdul Jabar, the district chief.

Another blast Friday in Kandahar's Zhari district killed an Afghan guard escorting a NATO supply convoy, said Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, a local official. Four other guards were wounded, he said.

An airstrike in Zabul, another southern province, killed three (alleged Taliban fighters) who were planting a bomb on a road Thursday, said Ghulam Jelani Farahi, Zabul's deputy provincial police chief.

Four U.S. troops killed in southern Afghanistan

Fri Aug 7, 2009, 3:02 am ET

KABUL (Reuters) –

A roadside bomb killed four U.S. troops in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, where thousands of Marines are conducting the biggest operation of the war, the military said on Friday.

The death toll is on the rise among Western troops in Afghanistan. Last month, 76 foreign troops died in Afghanistan, making it by far the deadliest month of the war. This month 15 have already died, including 11 Americans.

A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul said the four were killed when their vehicle struck the homemade bomb on Thursday. He gave no details of the location of the incident or the unit to which the troops belonged.

There are now more than 100,000 Western troops in Afghanistan, including about 62,000 Americans -- nearly double the U.S. strength at the start of the year as President Barack Obama has sought to turn the tide in the eight-year-old conflict.

British troops in Helmand have also launched a huge, simultaneous offensive in another part of Helmand, Operation Panther's Claw, facing heavy losses as they seize territory north of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.

Military commanders had warned of heavy casualties ahead of the Helmand offensives, part of Obama's new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and its allies and stabilize the country.

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Nick Macfie)