Source: Reuters
(For full coverage on Afghanistan, double click on [ID:nAFPAK]) (Adds Afghan, German defence officials, changes dateline)
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 6 (Reuters) - Four foreign soldiers with NATO-led forces were among six people killed by a roadside bomb in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan on Monday, a spokesman for the alliance and an Afghan police official said.
It was the worst security incident involving foreign troops in the north for several weeks. Northern Afghanistan is considered relatively safe compared with Taliban strongholds in the south and east.
A spokesman for the NATO-led alliance did not give any more details about the blast or the nationality of the victims.
Kunduz police chief Abdul Razaaq said two Afghan civilians were also killed.
"There was a joint police and NATO patrol which was hit by a roadside bomb to the east to the city," Razaaq told Reuters.
Germany has about 3,700 troops in Afghanistan, most of them based in Kunduz and other northern provinces. However a German Defence Ministry spokesman in Berlin said the dead soldiers were believed to be Americans, not Germans.
There was no confirmation about the nationality of the dead soldiers from the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
"My understanding is that it was a mentoring team that was en route in a Humvee," the German Defence Ministry spokesman said.
In June, three German soldiers were killed when the armoured personnel carrier they were travelling in came under fire and crashed near Kunduz city.
(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin in KABUL and Noah Barkin in BERLIN; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Bomb kills 4 U.S. troops as Afghan violence flares
06 Jul 2009 14:26:01 GMT
Source: Reuters
(For full coverage on Afghanistan, double click on [ID:nAFPAK])
* Bomb kills 6, including 4 foreign soldiers, in north
* Suicide bomber kills 2 Afghans near NATO base in Kandahar
* U.S. Marines push on with big new offensive
By Paul Tait
KABUL, July 6 (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers were among six people killed by a roadside bomb in northern Afghanistan on Monday, officials said, amid a spike in insurgency violence as the U.S. military pushed ahead with a major new offensive.
In southern Kandahar, a suicide bomber killed two people when he drove a car packed with explosives towards a line of truck drivers waiting to supply foreign troops at a key base in a province long considered the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.
In Zabul, north of Kandahar, two more foreign soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb, an alliance spokesman said. No other details were available.
Kandahar is adjacent to Helmand province, where thousands of Marines launched a new assault last week to wrest the initiative away from the Taliban in a province which also supplies most of the opium poppy that funds the insurgency.
The roadside bombing in Kunduz province was the worst security incident involving foreign troops in the north for several weeks. Northern Afghanistan is considered relatively safe compared with Taliban strongholds in the south and east.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said five soldiers were killed.
Kunduz police chief Abdul Razaaq also said two Afghan civilians were among the dead.
"There was a joint police and NATO patrol which was hit by a roadside bomb to the east to the city," Razaaq told Reuters.
Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, confirmed the dead soldiers were American but gave no further details.
German Defence Ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe said in Berlin a NATO team training Afghan troops was travelling in an armoured humvee vehicle when it was hit by the bomb. Germany has about 3,700 troops in Afghanistan, most of them in the north.
The U.S. Marines are the biggest wave of 17,000 new combat troops ordered into Afghanistan by U.S. President Barack Obama by the end of this year as part of his new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan. [ID:nSP535775]
The Helmand offensive, Operation Strike of the Sword, was launched with insurgency-related violence at its highest since the Taliban's austere Islamist government was ousted in 2001 for failing to hand over al Qaeda leaders wanted over the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
TWISTED METAL, SHRAPNEL
While no major battles have been reported in Helmand since the offensive began last Thursday, attacks across the country in the past three days have killed civilians as well as Afghan and foreign soldiers.
In Kandahar, the Taliban's base through the early 1990s where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden also lived for a time, the suicide bomber drove his car up to a line of supply trucks near the sprawling NATO base at Kandahar Air Field. [ID:nISL519651]
"It was a suicide car attack which killed two truck drivers and wounded 10 more of them, along with two (Afghan) army soldiers," said General Sher Mohammad Zazai in Kandahar.
Another army officer, who asked not to be identified, said four Afghan soldiers were also killed but there was no independent confirmation.
Reuters pictures showed the front of one truck badly twisted and pock-marked by shrapnel, its windshield blown out.
A Taliban spokesman told Reuters in Pakistan that the suicide bomber killed 12 NATO troops and four Afghan soldiers.
In neighbouring Uruzgan, Afghan security forces killed seven Taliban fighters, the local police chief said.
Afghan security officials also said four police and six Taliban fighters were killed during an attack on a police post in Helmand's Musa Qala, near the Helmand River, on Monday.
Suicide attacks and roadside bomb blasts are the most common weapons used by the Taliban in their campaign to drive out almost 90,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops in Afghanistan and to destabilise President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government.
Washington is pouring in extra troops in part to ensure security for Aug. 20 presidential elections, the second in Afghanistan's short history as a democracy.
Two U.S. soldiers were also killed in an attack on a combat outpost in southeastern Paktika province on Saturday.
Three British soldiers were also killed in roadside bomb blasts and a rocket grenade attack at the weekend in Helmand.
All three died in operations near Gereshk, Helmand's main industrial city in the Helmand River valley where U.S. Marines launched their new offensive. [ID:nL5720259]
One of the main objectives of the new Marines offensive is not just to take ground from the Taliban but to also hold it, something overstretched British-led NATO troops in Helmand have so far been unable to do.
There has also been a spate of kidnappings at the weekend, another tactic commonly used by Taliban insurgents as well as criminal gangs seeking ransom payments. [ID:nISL229615] (Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin and Golnar Motevalli in KABUL, Kamal Sadat in GARDEZ, Ismail Sameem in KANDAHAR and Saeed Ali Achakzai in CHAMAN, Pakistan; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
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