NATO Afghan toll exceeds 3,000
KABUL
Afghan National Army soldiers inspect the wreckage of a car destroyed by a roadside bomb in which four civillians killed in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. NATO says that it killed a number of insurgents with an airstrike in the eastern Logar province. AFP photo
Three NATO soldiers were killed in separate attacks in eastern Afghanistan over the weekend, bringing the total death toll for NATO troops to over 3,000 since the beginning of its mission in the country.Two soldiers died in a roadside bomb explosion early yesterday and another was killed in an insurgent attack on July 21, the International Security Assistance Force said, without giving further details or naming the nationalities of the dead. The latest deaths bring the total toll among the U.S.-led coalition so far this year to 250, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on the website icasualties.org.
The total death toll for Afghanistan NATO coalition forces is 3,094 since 2001, according to the website. The international forces plan to leave by the end of 2014. The U.S. forces account for most of the casualties, with 2,050 military dead since 2001. The deadliest year for U.S. forces in Afghanistan was 2010, when 499 soldiers were killed. The U.K. has lost 422 soldiers since 2001, and the rest of the Afghan mission countries, including Turkey, have lost 622 since the beginning of the mission.
Taliban kills five civillians
NATO also said that it killed a number of insurgents with an airstrike in the Mohammad Agha district of eastern Logar province, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, Taliban insurgents executed five civilians near Kabul for working with NATO troops, authorities said yesterday, the latest in a series of militant activities in villages around the capital. Roadside bombs, a favorite weapon of Taliban insurgents, have taken a particularly heavy toll in Afghanistan this month. Six American soldiers died in a huge blast on July 8 in the same eastern region of the country, which is the focus of a NATO push against insurgents along the border with Pakistan. On the same day, 18 civilians travelling in three vehicles were killed in Kandahar province. On July 19, eight civilians, five Afghan police and two NATO soldiers were killed in three separate explosions.
15 militants kılled in Pakistan
KALAYA, Pakistan
Pakistani military jets struck militant hideouts in the northwest of the country yesterday, killing 15 militants and wounding several others, military officials said.
The airstrikes targeted four hideouts in the remote Ghaljo and Dabori areas of the northwestern Orakzai tribal region, the officials said, according to Reuters. The locations were being used by members of the Pakistan Taliban. The Pakistan military has been conducting operations against militants in Orakzai for months. The airstrikes came a day after seven soldiers were killed by gunmen at a checkpoint in Pakistan’s insurgency-hit southwestern province of Baluchistan. “Armed men surrounded Pashookan post of Pakistan coast guards near the town of Gwadar and gunned down seven soldiers,” local administration chief Sohailur Rehman said, adding that three other soldiers were wounded.
The assailants fled on motorbikes after the shooting, another official Rehmat Dashti told Agence France-Presse. Baluchistan suffers from sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and a separatist insurgency.