Four Italian soldiers killed in Afghanistan: ministry

 Sat Oct 9, 2010, 5:43 am ET

ROME (AFP) –

Four Italian soldiers were killed and a fifth seriously injured in Afghanistan when a bomb blew up their vehicle on Saturday, the defence ministry announced.

The soldiers were ambushed as they returned from a mission in the Gulistan valley in the southwestern province of Farah, General Massimo Fogari, head of the press service at the defence chief of staff told the television network Tg 24.

They were escorting a convoy of 70 civilian trucks and travelling in an armoured car which took the full force of the explosion of a powerful home-made bomb, the Italian news agency ANSA said.

"After the blast, the convoy came under fire until the attackers were forced to flee" by the military retaliating, Fogari said, adding that the attack was typical of the Taliban's modus operandi.

The wounded soldier was evacuated by helicopter and said to be conscious despite suffering multiple injuries.

The zone where the attack happened is one of three places recently allocated to the control of Italian forces.

The deaths took to 34 the number of troops from Italy to die in Afghanistan since 2004, when Italian troops were deployed to the war-torn country as part of a NATO-led mission to confront a Taliban-led insurgency.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini expressed his "deep pain" at the latest deaths, saying they were "another example of the very high human price which has to be paid for a mission fundamental for national security."

He said Italy was "totally committed to the new transition phase in international strategy in Afghanistan being worked out at the NATO summit in November."

He said he also wanted to see "the taking of responsibility for security matters and control of territory by Afghan forces speeded up, province by province."

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi issued a statement expressing his pain "at this tragic ambush."

Italy has about 3,400 soldiers in Afghanistan, most of them in the west of the country. The deployment is set to grow to 4,000 soldiers by the end of the year.

The latest deaths took the number of foreign troops killed this year in the conflict to 572, according to a toll complied by AFP from the independent Internet site icasualties.org.

The first nine months of 2010 have been the deadliest for international troops since a US-led international coalition chased the Taliban from power in late 2001.

The toll of 521 dead for 2009 had already made it by far and away the bloodiest year in the conflict, which has escalated markedly in the past three years.

British hostage in Afghanistan killed in rescue bid

By Patrick Markey Patrick Markey –

Saturday, October 9, 2010

KABUL (Reuters) –

A British aid worker kidnapped by gunmen in Afghanistan last month was killed by her captors after a failed rescue bid, the British government said on Saturday, and four more NATO troops died in an insurgent attack.

The aid worker's death came as President Hamid Karzai sought tribal support for a NATO-led offensive against the Taliban in their southern heartland in an attempt to turn the tide in a war that has now dragged on for more than nine years.

Linda Norgrove, 36, who worked for a U.S. aid group, had been held hostage since September 26 after she was seized with three Afghan co-workers as they visited a project in remote part of Kunar province, a lawless region bordering Pakistan.

"Responsibility for this tragic outcome rests squarely with the hostage takers. From the moment they took her, her life was under grave threat," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.

Hague gave no further details on the Friday night rescue bid and the motives for Norgrove's kidnap were unclear. Norgrove, a former U.N. worker, was director of a $150 million U.S. aid project designed to build local economies.

Her death highlights the increasing dangers faced by aid workers in Afghanistan, where insurgents and other armed groups hold sway in many parts of the country.

In August, eight foreign medical workers, including a British female doctor, as well as two Afghans, were killed by unidentified gunmen in the remote northeast. Insurgents are still holding two French journalists seized last December.

The Afghanistan war is weighing increasingly on President Barack Obama's administration as he and his NATO allies face pressure at home to bring the unpopular war to an end.

MORE FOREIGN TROOPS DIE

The conflict is at its most violent since the Taliban were overthrown in late 2001 by U.S.-backed forces. Around 150,000 foreign troops are in the country and more 2,000 have been killed since the war began, over half just in the last two years.

In the latest violence, four Italian troops were killed in an insurgent attack in the west of the country. The soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, were returning from a mission when their vehicle was ambushed, Italy's defense ministry said.

"This assault against Italian soldiers is an example of the high human cost we have to pay for a mission that is fundamental to our national security," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in a statement.

The upsurge in violence coincides with the lqaunch of a campaign by thousands of U.S. troops to drive the insurgents out of areas surrounding the southern city of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the hardline Taliban.

Karzai travelled to Kandahar on Saturday with the commander of U.S. and NATO forces, General David Petraeus, and U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry to seek support from hundreds of tribal elders in Arghandab, a volatile district where U.S. troops are fighting.

"I ask you to help cooperate with the government. We have brought security for you people," Karzai told the elders. "Try to keep it stable and try to tell those elders who have left their villages for the cities to come back."

The Kandahar offensive comes at a key time for Obama who faces November mid-term elections and also an end-of-year review of the Afghanistan war strategy.

The insurgency has extended its reach in recent years from its traditional heartland in the south and east of the country to once more peaceful regions, particularly the north.

On Friday, a large bomb in a mosque killed the governor of northern Kunduz province and at least a dozen others as they attended prayers in the highest profile assassination of a government official in more than a year.

In December, Obama ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan to curb the Taliban's resurgence, but he also said U.S. forces would start to come home from July next year as they turn security over to the Afghan armed forces. (Additional reporting by Jonathon Burch, Ismail Sameem in Kabul and Catherine Hornby in Rome and Mohammed Abbas in London)