Combined Afghan, Canadian and other troops backed by gunship helicopters killed or wounded about 100 Taliban in raids on a stronghold in southern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday
The operation, launched Saturday in Kandahar Province, also cost the lives of two Canadian troops and their interpreter, as well as an Afghan soldier.
The Canadian Defense Ministry confirmed the identity of the soldiers as Corporal Nicolas Raymond Beauchamp, 28, and Private Michel Levesque, 25, both from Quebec.
Three other Canadian soldiers were also injured when the team's light-armored vehicle struck an improvised explosive device about 40km west of Kandahar, the ministry said in a statement.
The three wounded soldiers were taken by helicopter to the Multinational Medical Unit at Kandahar Airfield for treatment.
Meanwhile, Kandahar police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb said "100 Taliban have been killed and wounded" over the weekend.
"Twenty-five Taliban have been buried in one location," he said.
Mostly Canadian NATO troops and Taliban insurgents have been engaged in fierce fighting in the Zherai district, west of Kandahar, for more than a year with each side seizing then losing the same ground several times.
NATO forces have called in airstrikes against insurgent positions and fighting was still going on, a Kandahar police official said.
Meanwhile, a car bomber rammed his vehicle into a convoy of foreign forces in the Girishk district of Helmand Province yesterday but no one was wounded, provincial police chief Hussain Andiwal said.
The target of the attack was a US Humvee, a spokesman for NATO forces said, and it was not clear if it was a suicide attack or not.
Elsewhere, two policemen and three insurgents were killed when the Taliban attacked a police patrol in the Qarabagh district of Ghazni Province, southwest of Kabul, the local intelligence chief, Mohammad Zamaan, said.
In related developments, the head of the British army has warned of serious overstretch and morale problems among troops in excerpts from a high-level report published by the Sunday Telegraph.
Sir Richard Dannatt said the present level of operations was "unsustainable," the British army is "undermanned" and troops are feeling "devalued, angry and suffering from Iraq fatigue," the newspaper said.
The report, which was drawn from months of interviews with thousands of soldiers, warned that increasing numbers of troops were "disillusioned" with service life and "the tank of goodwill now runs on vapor -- many experienced staff are talking of leaving."
"We must strive to give individuals and units ample recuperation time between operations, but I do not underestimate how difficult this will be to achieve whilst under-manned and with less robust establishments than I would like," Dannatt's report said.
In a separate article in the Sunday Telegraph, UK Defense Secretary Des Browne acknowledged that "we are now asking a lot of the services and their families ... Iraq and Afghanistan place huge demands on our personnel."
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
RSS