# Afghan bomb injures three Canadian soldiers



## John Nayduk (5 Oct 2005)

Afghan bomb injures three Canadian soldiers
  
Private Jon Drew mans a perimeter position at an Afghanistan National Police Sub Station prior to heading out on a foot patrol on the streets of Kandahar City. (image: Canadian Forces)

Canadian Press 
  
Updated: Wed. Oct. 5 2005 6:35 AM ET 

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Three Canadian soldiers are being treated for minor injuries after a roadside bomb exploded Wednesday near a convoy of Canadian troops on the outskirts of the southern city of Kandahar, a Canadian military spokesman said. 

The blast also seriously wounded at least one Afghan civilian, according to an Afghan official. Capt. Francois Giroux, a spokesman for the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, said about a dozen Canadian soldiers were in the convoy when the blast occurred. 

The military immediately blocked the road where the blast happened and an investigation is underway. 

Kandahar provincial Gov. Asadullah Khalid said one Afghan man who was driving past in a tractor at the time of the explosion was badly hurt. 

Mohammed Sabir, who witnessed the blast from 200 metres away, said a second Afghan, a child, also was hurt, and that a Canadian jeep was caught in the blast as well. 

There was no immediate official confirmation of that. 

Sgt. Marina Evans, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul, confirmed a homemade bomb went off near a Canadian patrol, outside their base, but none of its forces were hurt or equipment damaged. 

Canadian military officials refused comment. 

The bombing came less than a week after Defence Minister Bill Graham warned that the Canadian army's move from Kabul, the relatively stable capital, to the heart of Taliban country boosts the odds of Canadian deaths and injuries. 

A small Canadian force of about 250 troops is working in Kandahar right now with about 1,000 more set to deploy early next year. 

A small special forces unit is also operating in the area, hunting and killing Taliban and al Qaeda rebels. Canada will also take command of the international operation in the region next year.


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## The Bread Guy (5 Oct 2005)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/05/content_3584602.htm

"A suspected suicide attacker was killed and a civilian was injured on Wednesday as the attacker tried to target a Canadian convoy in Kandahar, the former stronghold of Taliban in south Afghanistan, provincial governor said.  "The attacker which planted the explosive material in a Pick-up vehicle was killed on the spot and the driver of a tractor passingthe area was injured when the device went off an hour ago on Kandahar airbase road," Assadullah Khalid told Xinhua...."


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## career_radio-checker (5 Oct 2005)

anybody know what the troops were riding in?


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## MOOO! (5 Oct 2005)

The troops were is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx vehicles.   The vehicles did stand up to the blast.   Our troops did take minor injuries and are being treated for them.

Edited for inaccurate info / OPSEC.


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## Island Ryhno (5 Oct 2005)

I'm glad they were all ok, any word on the unit they were from. Also was it our guys who killed the bomber? I undertand persec/opsec if that's the case. Good on them if it was them that got the sneaky no good ba$tard.


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## BetterThanTheBest (5 Oct 2005)

The three troops only had light injuries, bruises and minor burns, stuff like that. They're already back on duty. It's too bad about the kid, apparently he died of his injuries. His old man is being treated for serious injuries as well. It sucks that these scumbags attack us and end up doing more damage to the people of their country than they do to us. I really cannot understand how they think. Who sets off a bomb less than a hundred meters from an orphanage and when they can clearly see a man and a child on a tractor next to the convoy?

Island Ryhno: I think they beleive it was a suicide bomber in a car at the moment.


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## Island Ryhno (5 Oct 2005)

Ok, seen and thanks!


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## MOOO! (5 Oct 2005)

Yes the bomber was killed in his vehicle.  One would think that these guys would run out of so called martyrs for their cause after seeing what we do to help them, but hey that would be logic.


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## CBH99 (5 Oct 2005)

Those ********.   I'm glad our guys are alright, but you guys said it well.   What kind of decent person sets off an explosive device when a father and his child are nearby in a tractor?   Don't they believe they are protecting Islam from the Crusaders of the West - and yet the only people they kill is the father of a young boy, both of whom are in the wrong place at the wrong time.   He isn't even around to be accountable for his actions, either.   ******.


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## MOOO! (5 Oct 2005)

I have to say it could have been worse if it was just after school time due to the close proximity to the orphanage.  These guys have to start to help us more get the fanatical goofs within their society that want to hurt anyone they can for their so called cause.


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## DG-41 (5 Oct 2005)

I would think that the sanity of anyone planning on blowing himself up as part of the mission is already questionable.

He probably just didn't notice the civillians - and if he did, I doubt it would have mattered.

DG


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## CBH99 (5 Oct 2005)

I'm even more resentful now.   Not only did they detonate their explosives 100m away from an orphanage (Good thing none of those kids were hurt) - but I just learned it was the BOY who died, and not the father.   Great, so a suicide bomber decides instead of standing up to the forces in his country in which he deems as "Crusaders against Islam" - he'll do it the way that requires the least amount of confrontation, suicide.   And, the only person other than the bomber who dies is a young boy.   Way to serve Allah (editorial comments removed by moderator).


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## MOOO! (5 Oct 2005)

I believe they know now that it is a bit harder to get close to our guys over there.  The bomber did it when he/she thought it was best.  Thank god they cant practice this skill, it's a one way trip and you don't need to be intelligent for that type of job.  

I hope more of them blow themselves up taking their bomb buddies with them. and all the intelligent people they try to recruit start thinking of the harm they do to their innocents like that little boy.


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## teddy49 (5 Oct 2005)

Unfortunately they seem to have recuritment down to a science.  It seems to be more of a form of Pavlovian style conditioning beginning from a very young age.  And most Suicide bombers usually achieve their goal well before an age where we'd expect Canadian boys and young men to start thinking rationally for themselves.  These kids are killingthemselves at an age when Canadian kids are thinking that the world is ending because they didn't get the cool cell phone or their jeans went  out of style yesterday.  As for the people who dispatch them on their missions, Know your troops and promote their welfare, isn't high on the list of leadership traits.

Unfortunately as the tactics that are being perfected in Iraq make their way back here, we're going to see more casualties.  Here in Iraq, they get 5-10 members of the security forces per day.  Body counts are going to rise in Afganistan.  If the iranians start funding and supplying the insurgency on both fronts, which they probably already are, then things are only going to get more sporty there.


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## scm77 (5 Oct 2005)

Some pictures






click here for hi-res





click here for hi-res





click here for hi-res


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## McG (5 Oct 2005)

I'm a little surprised that the CF has chosen to publish photos of a post blast investigation.


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## cbt arms sub tech (5 Oct 2005)

Anyone know how the G-Wagon survived, a true test today compared to the Iltis, if it isn't OPSEC!


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## DBA (5 Oct 2005)

Lot of memebers of the 82nd Airborne in the photos as well, looks more like some pictures the troops took and posted somewhere.


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## PPCLI Guy (6 Oct 2005)

Nope - these are the official photos.

Dave


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## Monsoon (6 Oct 2005)

cbt arms sub tech said:
			
		

> Anyone know how the G-Wagon survived, a true test today compared to the Iltis, if it isn't OPSEC!


Not OPSEC - it's in the papers today.  Apparently it held up very well: broken bumper and smashed headlights and that's it.


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## Devo (6 Oct 2005)

(bumper was broken b4)


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## Michael Dorosh (6 Oct 2005)

DG-41 said:
			
		

> I would think that the sanity of anyone planning on blowing himself up as part of the mission is already questionable.
> 
> DG



Maybe he's just more dedicated to his cause than you could ever hope to be.  I don't understand the penchant for laughing them off or wishing they would "run out of martyrs."  Look at the number of successful kamikaze attacks the Japanese mounted on Allied warships in 1945.  They weren't insane, they weren't even slightly loony.  These were dedicated military professionals who felt they had a cause worth dying for.  Were it not for the A bombs, there would have been many more deaths - Japanese suicide pilots/soldiers as well as Allied servicemen.  It only seems crazy because we are on the outside looking in.  Few people in the world do things to be "evil" or because they are "nuts."  And there have been far too many suicide bombings to be able to creditably put them all down to mental illness.

DG, you swore an oath.  Could you blow yourself up in order to live up to it?  I couldn't.  I think that puts this guy one up on me, frankly.

Keep thinking that their sanity is an issue; we also thought that 'the Nips' were bucktoothed medieval minded pissants who couldn't see well in the dark because of their slanted eyes.  Then they taught the world a few lessons at Hong Kong, Singapore, and in the Phillipines. Ask any pilot in a Brewster Buffalo or Vindicator what he thought of the Zero and the guys that flew them.

Don't get me wrong, we will beat these "terrorists" just as we beat the Japanese, but wishing for them to kill themselves off without us having to do anything about it, or try to understand how they think - and why -is not going to accomplish that goal.


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## DG-41 (6 Oct 2005)

But a Kamakazie was going after a high-value target with a long-lead replacement time where successful completion of the mission would result in a substancial military effect. You take out an aircraft carrier or a fully-loaded fleet oiler, and you have accomplished something.

It's very, very difficult to talk about what I would or wouldn't do with regards to missions with low survival probabilities with any degree of certainty when faced with the real thing - everybody is a VC waiting to happen in their heads - so take this next part with an appropriate grain of salt.

- I can imagine participating in a zero-survivable mission if the stakes were dire enough and the payoff large enough (Kamakaze)

- I can imagine participating in a low-survivable mission (like the Guns of Naverone) if the payoff is large enough and there is at least a hope that skill and luck might pull me through it.

- I can imagine sacrificing myself to save my comrades (the archtypical throwing one's self on a grenade) 

But I cannot imagine sacrificing myself to take out a couple of lone soldiers on patrol. There's no payoff. Even if there is complete success, I'm dead and the damage done to the enemy is so slight as to be hardly worth mentioning.

I think any rational soldier can invision circumstances where he might have to sacrifice himself for the greater good in the line of duty, but the assumption that goes along with that is that the sacrifice would mean something. To sacrifice one's self with no hope of meaningful payoff... that implies, to me at least, a certain lack of rational thinking.

What really fascinates me is - what is driving these guys to the point where they are willing to self-sacrifice for so little payoff? Are their lives so horrible that suicide is the only way out? If so, why - and what can we do to correct that?

DG


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## 48Highlander (6 Oct 2005)

Religion and fanaticism mainly.  Their living standards have nothing to do with it, generaly suicide bombers attacking "western" targets have been fairly well off even by our standards.  In places like Palestine ofcourse, a large numebr of suicide bombers do come from poor families with horrible living standards, however, it's been shown over and over that poverty is not the root cause of such behaviour.


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## Michael Dorosh (6 Oct 2005)

DG-41 said:
			
		

> What really fascinates me is - what is driving these guys to the point where they are willing to self-sacrifice for so little payoff? Are their lives so horrible that suicide is the only way out? If so, why - and what can we do to correct that?
> 
> DG



Interesting post, well stated.   I'll focus on your last para.   As 48 says, you're looking at it the wrong way around.   These guys may be envisioning the next life they are going to - Paradise, Heaven, Valhalla, the promised virgins, etc.   But I doubt that drives them either, not primarily.   You don't think they could genuinely feel that killing a Canadian in a jeep is just as important as taking out the USS Bunker Hill?   I doubt they sit down and do cost/benefit analyses.   I can't speak for them, but I'd be foolish to try and rationalize from a western standpoint why they do what they do.   And that's kind of the point, isn't it.   You're not going to buy them off with Nintendos, or free health care.   Gotta be much more goin' on under the hood than most of us are aware of.   I doubt he wants a free subscription to MAXIM and a six-pack either.

But I do know he's not insane, and 48 says he's not poor.   What does that leave.   Idealism?   What are his ideals?


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## Jaxson (6 Oct 2005)

"What really fascinates me is - what is driving these guys to the point where they are willing to self-sacrifice for so little payoff? Are their lives so horrible that suicide is the only way out? If so, why - and what can we do to correct that?"

You know i wanted to post an answer for you, but i cant, and no one else on this forum can post an ANSWER, they can only post their thoughts. The answer i can give you, my thoughts rather are this. Imagine you are an Iraqi, or afghanistani, your parents were raised like theirs before them, to hate the west for reasons that may now forgotten, and from the time they can teach you, you are taught "the west is bad, they want us to be like them, they want to have it worse, so they can have it better and easier, if they catch you, they will hurt you or try to make you someone else" now your mind state is this as a child " my parents are telling me the way things are, so it must be so and i shall hate the west because they are evil and want to do me harm" and you are told this every day of your life, and you will pass it on to your children because you have met no westerners yet so you know no different, and then, an invasion and press your beliefs harder, and now you know what was taught to you, and what you taught your kids is true, and instead of being caught and tortured, you will die in sacrifice to kill as many as possible, so there are that many less "evil westerners" to harm those you love and know.

What can we do? Well, we can prove to them, that we aren't evil, but how long will that take? we can help them rebuild and improve their lives, but we can only reach out to so many at one time, and we can only change so many minds and views, some will always be stuck to what they were taught and raised upon.

These are my thoughts, feel free to criticise and rip apart.


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