Four foreign soldiers, six police killed in Afghanistan (Roundup)

Jul 7, 2009, 14:12 GMT

   Kabul - Four foreign soldiers, six police and over 20 Taliban were killed in separate incidents across Afghanistan, officials announced on Tuesday.

   A British soldier and two Canadian servicemen died in a helicopter crash in the south-eastern region, a US soldier was killed in a clash in the western part of the country, their militaries said.

   The crash occurred Monday on takeoff from a base in Tarnak Va Jalkak in Zabul province, the Canadian Defence Ministry said.

   It was not caused by enemy fire and an investigation was ordered, it said. Three Canadian troops were also injured in the crash, including the two pilots.

   The British soldier was the sixth member of the British Task Force in Afghanistan to die in less than a week, taking the total of fatalities among British forces to 175 since late 2001.

   A US coalition soldier died as a result of injuries received in a roadside attack attack on a convoy in western Afghanistan at approximately 1 pm Tuesday, the US military said in a statement which did not give more details about the attack.

   Elsewhere, up to 20 Taliban fighters and six border police were killed in a clash in the eastern Nuristan province on Tuesday, the provincial governor said.

   Governor Jamaluddin Badr said a group of the Taliban attacked a border police post in Kamdesh district Tuesday morning, killing six officers. He said 21 attackers were also killed as the police returned fire.

   In other developments, one person was killed and 28 others wounded as a Taliban fighter threw a grenade into a police jeep in the south-eastern Khost city.

   Witnesses said a man on motorbike dropped an explosive into the police vehicle in a crowded area of the city Tuesday morning.

   Spokesman for the provincial governor Khochi Nasiri told the German Press Agency dpa a militant hurled a grenade at a crowd where a police jeep was passing, killing one civilian and injuring many others. Four police were also wounded in the attack, he said.

   A doctor in the city's civil hospital said the condition of four of the wounded, including a policeman, was critical.

   In the south-western Farah province, a local police official and two intelligence workers were killed in two separate incidents.

   Farah governor Rohul Amin told dpa that Sakhi Dad, deputy head of the counter-terrorism department in the province, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the provincial capital Farah city after midday while going home from his office.

   An armed and a civil worker of the local intelligence department were shot dead near Farah city by a national army soldier, the governor said. The soldier from the regional Western Zone Army Corps has been detained for investigation.

   Afghanistan has seen an increase in violence in recent weeks as the country moves towards the second presidential election set for August 20.

   Meanwhile, US General Stanley McChrystal, who took command of all foreign troops in Afghanistan last month, issued orders to limit the use of force, such as airstrikes, on sites likely to produce civilian casualties, calling it 'a cultural shift within our forces' away from conventional combat and necessary to win the support of the Afghan people.

   'We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories - but suffering strategic defeats - by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people,' McChrystal said in the order released overnight.

   Civilian casualties have long produced anger among the Afghan population, and avoiding such deaths and injuries is part of a new Afghan strategy by the administration of US President Barack Obama, which is focusing on winning support for the national government in Kabul through reconstruction and stabilization.

   'Commanders must weigh the gain of using CAS (close air support) against the cost of civilian casualties, which in the long run make mission success more difficult and turn the Afghan people against us,' McChrystal said in the directive that applies to US and ISAF troops.

   'Loss of popular support will be decisive to either side in this struggle,' he said. 'The Taliban cannot militarily defeat us - but we can defeat ourselves.'

   Two weeks ago, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council that about 800 civilians were killed from January to May, 24 per cent more than in the same period a year earlier.