A wave of clashes in Afghanistan killed more than 70 people on Friday, including 18 policemen and four Canadian soldiers, officials said.
The growing unrest has led Washington to deploy 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, due in the coming weeks, in a move a NATO general said would trigger more violence but would help improve security in the longer run.
The four Canadians, part of the international assistance force, were killed in two separate explosions that also killed an interpreter and injured eight soldiers and an Afghan national, the Canadian military said.
PHOTO: AFP
The first incident happened at 6:45am local time, Brigadier-General Jon Vance, the Canadian commander in Kandahar, said in an address televised in Canada from a base in southern Afghanistan.
“Two Canadian soldiers were killed and five wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated in the vicinity of their dismounted patrol in Zari district, 40km west of Kandahar City,” he said.
A local interpreter was also killed during this attack. Another Afghan national was injured.
The second blast occurred two hours later, killing two more Canadian soldiers and wounding three. Their vehicle struck a roadside bomb about 20km northeast of Kandahar City, Vance said.
Nine of the policemen were killed along with a district chief in a clash on Friday with Taliban in the northern province of Jawzjan, an unusual battlefield for the extremists, who focus on southern and eastern Afghanistan.
“Today in a clash between Taliban and police, the district chief and nine police were killed,” provincial police chief Khalil Aminzada said.
The fighting was in a district called Koshtipa, on the border with Turkmenistan, he said.
Nine other policemen were killed and three wounded in the southwestern province of Farah when a mob of Taliban attacked them, provincial governor Rohul Amin said. Six of the attackers also died in the fighting, he said.
The clash followed fighting earlier in the day when Afghan and US-led troops were called in after intelligence was received of a plan to attack the governor’s home, Amin said. Seven Taliban were killed in that exchange, he said.
Elsewhere in Farah on Friday, a suicide bomber blew up a bomb-filled police vehicle, killing one policeman and wounding two, the governor said. The vehicle had previously been stolen by the insurgents.
The US military also announced on Friday that six more alleged insurgents were killed in operations in Kunar, Logar and Helmand provinces.
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