Afghan bomb kills 11, including children: police

by Nasrat Shoib Nasrat Shoib –

Fri Jul 17, 2009, 6:26 am ET

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) –

A Taliban bomb attack killed 11 civilians, including children and toddlers, going to a shrine in Afghanistan on Friday, police said following a surge of attacks ahead of key elections.

The explosives ripped through a civilian pick-up vehicle taking a group of men, women and children to visit a centuries-old tomb in Spin Boldak district in Kandahar province, just a few kilometres (miles) from the Pakistani border.

"Three women, three men and five children were killed," General Saifullah Hakim, a senior border police official, told AFP.

"All of them were civilians. They were going to a shrine when their vehicle was hit by a newly planted bomb," he added.

Police said three women were wounded and evacuated to hospital.

"Today at around 9:00 am, a mini-van struck a roadside bomb in the Wanaki area of Spin Boldak," General Abdul Raziq, border police chief for Zabul and Kandahar provinces, told AFP, confirming the death toll.

"Three (of the dead) children were between one and two years old. The other two were aged around five," he said.

There was no claim of responsibility, but police blamed the attack on "enemies of the country" -- a term used to refer to the Taliban, Islamist hardliners leading an insurgency against the US-backed Afghan government.

Officers, quoting witness reports from the remote desert area, said the force of the blast ripped many of victims to pieces and that the death toll was calculated after pieces of flesh were collected from the site.

Roadside bombs are the deadliest weapon used by insurgents fighting against Afghan and Western forces, but also routinely kill and maim civilians.

Raziq speculated that border police may have been the intended target of Friday's blast because there was a border police post on the same road.

Afghanistan's nearly eight-year insurgency is at its deadliest, forcing the United States to dispatch an extra 21,000 soldiers in a bid to stabilise the country ahead of presidential and provincial council elections on August 20.

President Hamid Karzai is standing for re-election, but the spike in attacks has raised fears of violence disrupting the vote.

The Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001 until they were ousted by a US-led invasion, are fighting to regain control of the vast, predominantly rural country and oust foreign troops.

On July 9, a truck rigged with explosives blew up near Kabul, killing 25 people, including school students, in one of the deadliest blasts this year.

July has become the deadliest month for foreign troops fighting in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion, as Taliban guerrillas hone techniques copied from Iraq and Westerners struggle in a harsh climate.

The independent website icasualties.org, which calculates military losses in Afghanistan and Iraq, put the number of dead in the Afghan war at 47 so far this July, topping previously month records of 46 in June and August 2008.

In less than seven months, 203 foreign troops have died in Afghanistan, compared to 294 in 2008, 232 in 2007 and 191 in 2006. Just 12 soldiers died in 2001, when US-led troops invaded and launched the US-led global war on terror.

Nearly 4,000 US Marines this month launched a major operation in Taliban strongholds in the Helmand, which neighbours Kandahar and where an estimated 3,000 British troops have also launched an offensive further north.

Troop deaths spiral in Afghanistan as debate rages

By Paul Tait Paul Tait –

July 17, 2009

KABUL (Reuters) –

A roadside bomb killed a British soldier in southern Afghanistan, the military said on Friday, as defense officials in London said they may need to deploy even more troops in the fight against the Taliban.

July has already reached record monthly casualty levels for foreign troops in the eight-year-old war, with U.S. Marines and British soldiers launching major operations in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold in the south.

Civilians are also suffering more in an escalating fight. Nine members of the same family were killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace in the south.

With Washington identifying the fight against the Taliban as its major military priority, the U.S. and British operations are the first major offensives under U.S. President Barack Obama's new regional strategy to defeat the Islamist insurgents.

The death of the British soldier on Thursday near Gereshk, the main industrial city in Helmand, took the toll for foreign troops in Afghanistan in July to at least 47, the highest monthly total of the war since the Taliban was toppled in 2001.

The previous monthly highs of 46 were set in June and August of 2008.

The soaring death tolls have sparked fierce political debate in Britain over whether its troops are adequately equipped, whether it has enough soldiers on the ground and whether they should even be there at all.

Britain has boosted its troop levels by 700 to about 9,000 this year, the extra complement sent specifically to help secure an August 20 election, Afghanistan's second presidential vote in its short history as a democracy.

One criticism among Afghanistan's Western allies during the first weeks of the Helmand offensives has been the paucity of Afghan troops, with only about 650 fighting alongside 4,000 U.S. Marines in Operation Strike of the Sword.

OVERSTRETCHED

Foreign commanders say a primary goal of the offensives is to take ground from the Taliban and hold it, something overstretched British troops have so far been unable to do. They say they hope Afghan troops will be able to move in and hold that ground.

But on Friday, the head of the British army said the extra 700 troops should stay on after the elections and that Britain may need to deploy more soldiers for up to 18 months until the Afghan army is ready to take on greater responsibility.

"There may well be a case for a short-term uplift. Our government will have to confront it, if asked, for about 12-18 months until the Afghan army can get the right strength out here," General Richard Dannatt told BBC radio in Afghanistan.

He said it would be "wrong militarily" to reduce troop levels back to 8,300 after the elections, which President Hamid Karzai is widely expected to win.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose Labour government trails in opinion polls and faces a general election within a year, has also urged Afghanistan to do more make its troops available on the ground if the southern offensives are to work.

British soldiers have borne the brunt of the Taliban resistance to the Helmand offensives, with eight killed in one day last week, their worst battlefield toll since the Falklands War in the 1980s.

Britain's death toll in Afghanistan has reached at least 185, more than the 179 killed in Iraq since 2003.

U.S. military deaths are also fast approaching their highest levels of the war, with at least 23 killed in combat so far this month. September 2008 was the worst month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with 26 killed in action.

U.S. troop levels have already risen by thousands. Under Obama's new strategy, they will more than double from 32,000 at the end of 2008 to a projected 68,000 by the end of 2009.

In Kandahar, senior police officer Saifullah Hakim said the roadside bomb that killed nine people had been planted on a road near the Pakistan border often used by convoys of Afghan and foreign troops.

Five children and two women were among the dead. The family had been traveling in a van to a shrine, Hakim said.

In neighboring Paktika province, Afghan and foreign forces killed 11 Taliban insurgents during an overnight operation that included air strikes, Afghan and NATO officials said.

(Additional reporting by Ismail Sameem in KANDAHAR, Hamid Shalizi in KABUL and Matt Falloon in LONDON; Editing by David Fox)