Attacks kill five Coalition troops
A series of bomb blasts and militant attacks killed 11 people across Afghanistan, including five Nato service members and three Afghan police.
Yesterday’s strikes came a day after Taliban fighters stormed a Nato base in eastern Afghanistan.
A British soldier, from 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment, was caught in a blast while on patrol in the Nad’e Ali area of Helmand province.
Nato also said three coalition service members were killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan and in the south, a roadside bomb killed a Danish soldier and wounded an interpreter, Denmark’s military said.
The are about 700 Danish troops in Afghanistan, based mainly in Helmand.
Yesterday’s deaths brought to 31 the number of coalition service members who have died in Afghanistan so far this month.
Militants also killed three Afghan policemen, who died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Uruzgan province in the south, said governor Khudi Rahim. Two other policemen were wounded in the blast in Tarin Kot district.
Tens of thousands of Afghan and coalition troops are pressing insurgents throughout southern and eastern Afghanistan and militants are retaliating with attacks on government workers and others aligned with the international troops.
A bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded in a marketplace in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province, just east of the Pakistan border, killing two people and wounding 10.
And in Nangahar province, a bomb placed in a wheelbarrow exploded in the provincial capital of Jalalabad, killing one person and wounding nine others, including six children and two women.
Nato also said it was investigating the death of an Afghan child was killed inadvertently during fighting in the Zhari district of Kandahar province yesterday. Another child also was wounded when Afghan and coalition forces fired back after coming under fire from insurgents, the coalition said.
:: Afghanistan’s former ambassador-designate to Pakistan, who was seized by gunmen two years ago in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, has been released and is back home.
Abdul Khaliq Farahi was freed in eastern Afghanistan late on Saturday in a joint effort by officials from both countries and had returned to Kabul, where he met President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader’s office said. A brief statement gave no details on how he was freed.
Mr Farahi was heading from the Afghan consulate toward his home in the border city of Peshawar on September 22 2008, when gunmen stopped the vehicle and killed his driver.
“Abdul Khaliq Farahi is in good condition and right now he is in Kabul with his family,” Mr Karzai’s office said.
