tomahawk6 said:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166316,00.html
Four troops were killed by an IED and three others were injured when a second IED detonated when they went to help the first vehicle.
Darn it...we knew about that tactic months ago...Why are we not learning as fast as they are?
Franko, not why the cab was fired upon...why they didn't kill the driver. Heres the link:
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-08-21T145818Z_01_KNE137587_RTRUKOC_0_UK-AFGHAN-USA.xml
Four U.S. soldiers killed in Afghan blast
Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:58 PM BST
By Robert Birsel
KABUL (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers were killed and three wounded in a bomb attack in Afghanistan on Sunday as they were trying to clear militants from an area before an election next month, the U.S. military said.
Hours later, two U.S. embassy staff were hurt when their vehicle was hit by a blast near the capital, Kabul.
U.S. forces have now suffered 47 deaths in combat in Afghanistan this year making it the worst period since they arrived to oust the Taliban in October 2001.
The three wounded U.S. soldiers were hurt in secondary explosions as they tried to pull fellow soldiers to safety after the first blast in Zabul province, in the south of the country.
"Attacks such as this strengthen, not weaken, the resolve of the U.S./Coalition, Afghan National Security Forces, and the Afghan people," said a U.S. commander, Major-General Jason Kamiya.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Dai Chopan district. A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, said Taliban fighters had planted the bomb.
Two Afghan government soldiers were killed in a similar blast in another part of troubled Zabul, a provincial official said.
The U.S. unit was involved in operations in support of the September 18 parliamentary and provincial elections, which the Taliban and other militants have condemned and vowed to disrupt.
"The unit's mission is part of a much larger operation to disrupt enemy forces and to thereby provide a safe environment for upcoming September elections," the U.S. military said.
The Afghan government and U.S. officials say the militants will fail in their bid to spoil the vote.
Sunday's casualty toll is the worst for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since 16 American servicemen were killed in June when their helicopter was shot down as they tried to rescue four trapped U.S. special forces soldiers.
Only one of the special forces soldiers survived.
"ROUTINE MISSION"
In Kabul, a U.S. embassy spokesman confirmed that two staff had been hurt in a blast, but declined to identify them.
"I can confirm that two American personnel of the U.S. embassy were slightly hurt while on a routine embassy mission," said the spokesman, Michael Macy. An investigation had been launched to find the attackers, he said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said the incident occurred on a dirt road in Paghman, a picnic spot 20 km (12 miles) west of the capital.
Paghman police chief Mohmmad Nayem Ibrahimkhel said the blast was caused by a remote controlled device, but did not say who might have been behind it. Paghman is not regarded as an area where Taliban or allied fighters are active.
Also on Sunday, suspected Taliban militants killed a senior pro-government cleric as he was walking to a mosque in Kandahar province, also in the south, a local official said.
Gunmen have this year killed several members of a government-appointed religious council in the south and east, where the militants are most active.
In June, Mawlavi Abdullah Fayaz, the head of Kandahar's religious council and a prominent Taliban critic, was shot dead and a suicide attack attributed to the Taliban killed more than 20 during his funeral at a mosque a day later.
The Taliban say the clerics are legitimate targets because they are preaching against the insurgents who have declared a holy war against the government and foreign forces. (Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul)
Does anyone remember this thread?
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/30734.0.html
particularly this from the second article I posted...
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=638522
Then, over the freezing Afghan winter, there were few attacks, leading to talk from the Kabul government and US military that the Taliban were short of recruits and low on morale. Soon, went the word, their commanders would be joining the amnesty set up to lure tired fighters in from the mountains. This programme is the hoped-for endgame after three and a half years of desultory guerrilla warfare which has tied down 18,000 US combat troops and cost the Pentagon more than $10bn ( £5.4bn) a year. The military is desperate to scale down troop numbers after September's parliamentary elections and hand over to Afghan forces and the 5,000 British troops who arrive at the end of this year.
That plan may now need a rethink. Instead of fizzling out, the Taliban have staged what has become a now-annual spring resurgence, and with a surprising new fighting spirit. Particularly worrying are signs that al-Qa'ida may once again be taking an interest in the war in Afghanistan. Since their rout in 2001 and the fall of their Taliban allies, the Arab and Chechen fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden seem to have concentrated efforts on Iraq, or simply on survival in the tribal belt of Pakistan. Now there are fears that surviving elements may be trying to open a second front to Iraq. Fighting spirit has been rare among the Afghan recruits from the religious schools, the boys the Taliban fling into battle usually to be slaughtered. But this year their ranks seem to have been reinforced by more experienced and more determined men.
The soldiers at Deh Chopan found evidence of that. When they had finished combing through the body parts of their enemies, among the 44 dead were Chechens and Pakistanis, feared al-Qa'ida fighters. Other reports indicate that more sophisticated tactics are being used and that new weapons are being smuggled in over the Pakistan border. When a Romanian soldier was killed near Kandahar last month it was a modern anti-tank mine that blew up his armoured personnel carrier, not an improvised bomb or one of the old Soviet landmines that frequently don't work.
Further north along the Pakistan border, near Khost, the war hasbecome a hot one - human waves of Taliban fighters launch night assaults against the fortified bases of an Afghan mercenary force recruited by the CIA. Those insurgents are under the command of an old warlord with links to Saudi Arabia - Jalaluddin Haqqani - whose Pakistan-based operations seem to have received a new infusion of Gulf money.
The capital, Kabul, has also seen a revival in terrorism. An apparent suicide bomb attack on a Kabul internet café popular with foreigners killed a UN employee and terrified foreign aid workers and diplomats. Then the worst anti-US riots since the fall of the Taliban devastated eastern Afghanistan last week. Seven died, aid agency buildings were burnt and looted, causing millions of dollars of damage.
