[NYTr] Aussie Troop Among 13 Killed in Afghanistan

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AFP via Google - Oct 9, 2007
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ju0M3Xp1oR6tUhE9abheo5WKNADw


Australian soldier among 13 killed in Afghanistan

KABUL (AFP) — An Australian soldier was among 13 people killed in fresh
violence in Afghanistan, officials said Monday, as the head of NATO
called for countries to share the burden in the fight against extremism
here.

The soldier was the second Australian trooper to be killed in
Afghanistan since an international alliance removed the hardline
Taliban regime in 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda extremists. The force
has remained to fight a rebel insurgency.

The soldier was killed in a bomb blast in the southern province of
Uruzgan and another was wounded, the Australian defence department said
on its website.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), under
which about 1,000 Australian soldiers serve along with deployments from
36 other nations, announced the fatality earlier but gave no details.

The new death takes to 181 the international soldiers to die in
Afghanistan this year, most of them in hostile action.

There was also another in a spate of Taliban suicide blasts Monday. The
attacker blew himself up near an ISAF convoy moving through the
southern town of Lashkar Gah, police said.

"It did not cause any harm to the NATO troops but two men nearby were
badly wounded," Helmand province police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal
told AFP.

Police announced meanwhile that Taliban had attacked a road
construction company in Ghazni province's Qarabagh district late
Sunday, killing three guards.

The bodies of two brothers were found in the same area Sunday. They
were "killed by Taliban over spying charges," district chief Khwaja
Ahmad Sidiqi said, adding that the men had not been working for the
government.

The interior ministry reported separately that seven "enemy elements"
were killed in an operation on Sunday in the province of Wardak, near
Kabul.

Insurgency-linked violence is at its highest this year, with more than
110 suicide bombings and almost daily attacks and battles across the
fragile country.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Monday that the
alliance and its partners must share the burden and stick together in
Afghanistan.

"We have witnessed many successes in Afghanistan but we must appreciate
that Afghanistan is one of the frontlines in the war on terrorism.

"If we don't prevail -- and we will prevail -- the consequences will be
felt all over the world because terrorism, unfortunately, is a global
phenomenon," de Hoop Scheffer said in Copenhagen.

As the Taliban militants have stepped up their military campaign, some
of the members of the 39,500-strong ISAF have began reviewing their
commitments with the force already under the pledged number of soldiers.

De Hoop Scheffer noted: "The fact that we have not been able yet to
fully live up to the promises the nations made is a point of concern."

ISAF works alongside a US-led coalition of about 15,000 people and the
fledgling Afghan security forces in an effort to quell the extremist
uprising and allow Kabul to exert its authority across the war-torn
country. 

Copyright © 2007 AFP. All rights reserved.