Canada announced on Wednesday the death of three soldiers in an insurgent attack on their armored vehicle in Afghanistan, bringing it closer to the symbolic figure of 100 casualties since the start of its mission in 2002.
The rocket attack occurred at 9:30am in the Zhari District in the south, killing three soldiers and injuring five others, said Brigadier-General Denis Thompson, the top Canadian commander in Kandahar.
“The soldiers were conducting a security patrol when the attack occurred,” he said. “All eight soldiers were evacuated to the Kandahar Airfield, where three were confirmed dead by medical officials.”
“Of the five soldiers who were injured, one is reported to be in critical condition, one is in serious but stable condition, two are in good condition and one has been treated and released,” he said.
The deceased soldiers were to end their Afghan tour later this month, Thompson said.
The oldest of them was 23 years old and had been injured once before on a previous rotation in Afghanistan in 2006.
The insurgents had found a weakness in their military vehicle’s armor, said Thompson, adding: “Sometimes the insurgents get lucky.”
Canada maintains a contingent of 2,500 soldiers in the Kandahar area as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
The latest fatalities bring Canada’s military death toll in Afghanistan since the start of the mission in 2002 to 96 soldiers.
The figure increases to 99 if the deaths of a senior diplomat in 2006 and two aid workers assassinated last month are counted.
Last month, the Taliban published a menacing letter urging Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan or face more bloodshed and civilian casualties.
But during a press conference on Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper left no doubt of his determination to hunt down insurgents until Canada’s scheduled withdrawal in 2011.
“This is a very dangerous, very difficult mission, but we went into this seven years ago because we realized that to leave a country like Afghanistan in a state of anarchy and chaos was creating a situation that was endangering our own security,” he said.
“We saw that with the attacks on the World Trade Center [in New York on Sept. 11, 2001] and we’re obviously working with our allies and with the government of Afghanistan to prevent that situation from developing ever again,” Harper said.
It is widely believed in Canada that Harper will announce snap elections in the coming days, and Canada’s mission in Afghanistan is almost certain to be a key issue in the campaign, with support usually waning after casualties are announced.
The main opposition Liberals earlier this year approved a mission extension to 2011, but demanded a renewed focus on reconstruction and development, and less on combat.
Harper reiterated his government’s goals were “to continue the good work our people have been doing in Afghanistan under very dangerous and very difficult circumstances and to transition towards the training of the Afghan military, [with] greater emphasis on development and reconstruction.”
More than 3,800 people — mostly insurgents, but also including about 190 international soldiers — have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS