KABUL, July 14, (Agencies): A string of bomb, rocket and gun attacks across southern Afghanistan have killed 12 NATO troops in just two days, officials said Wednesday, throwing the spotlight on the spiralling cost of the war.
The brazen assaults followed the killing of three British troops by a rogue Afghan soldier, an incident that has underscored concerns over efforts to build up the local army, a cornerstone of the US-led war strategy.
Four soldiers were killed in a Taleban-style bombing and a fifth by small-arms fire in the volatile south on Wednesday, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.
Late Tuesday, Taleban insurgents had set off a car bomb, then fired rockets and small arms into a police base in the southern province of Kandahar, killing three US soldiers and five Afghan civilians.
Afghan police backed by international forces fought back “and prevented insurgents from penetrating the compound perimeter,” ISAF said.
Zalmai Ayoubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar government, told AFP the car bomb was set off by a suicide bomber, adding that several other insurgents attacked the base with rockets and machine-gun fire for more than 20 minutes.
The interior ministry said another nine civilians were killed in the neighbouring province of Helmand on Tuesday when the minivan they were travelling in hit a roadside bomb — the Taleban’s weapon of choice.
A similar bomb killed two private security guards in Paktia province on the eastern border with Pakistan, it added.
The violence flared on the heels of the killing Tuesday by a renegade soldier of three members of a British Gurkha battalion on a base in Helmand, one of the most violent parts of the country.
At least 365 NATO soldiers have died in the conflict so far this year, compared with 521 for all of 2009.
President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan army chief have vowed a full investigation into the shooting.
Britain, the main US ally in the war against the Taleban, said it would not alter its strategy in working with local forces, which is key in enabling them to take over security and allow for an eventual exit for US-led troops.
US General David Petraeus, who assumed command of NATO troops this month, said it was vital to ensure that the trust between Afghan and international forces “remains solid in order to defeat our common enemies.”
Eight American troops died in attacks in southern Afghanistan, including a car bombing and gunfight outside a police compound in Kandahar, officials said Wednesday as the Taleban push back against a coalition effort to secure the volatile region.
In the southern city of Kandahar, a suicide attacker slammed a car bomb into the gate of the headquarters of the elite Afghan National Civil Order Police late Tuesday night, a NATO statement said. Minutes later, insurgents opened fire with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
Three US troops, an Afghan policeman and five civilians died in the attack, but NATO said the insurgents failed to enter the compound.
Four more American troops were killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb in the south, while one more US service member died the same day of wounds from a gunbattle.
So far in July, 45 international troops have died in Afghanistan, 33 of them Americans.
Also Wednesday, a senior army officer identified the Afghan soldier who turned against his British allies and killed three of them as Talib Hussein, age 22 or 23, from the eastern province of Ghazni.
Hussein is a Hazara, a Shiite Muslim minority, said Gen. Ghulam Farook Parwani, the deputy corps commander for southern forces including those in Helmand.
The identity of the soldier deepened the mystery of his motive, since the Hazara were persecuted by the Taleban — who are made up mostly of ethnic Pashtun Sunni Muslims who see Shiites as doctrinally impure — when the hard-liners ruled Afghanistan during 1996-2001 with their extreme interpretation of Islamic law. Very few Hazaras are known to have joined the Taleban insurgency.