Two British, one Danish soldiers killed in Afghanistan
KABUL (AFP) — Two British Marines and a Danish soldier were killed in Afghanistan, officials said Monday, days before a NATO summit is to hear appeals for more forces for the fight against the extremist Taliban.
The soldiers were slain in the southern province of Helmand, a region caught in the throes of an insurgency led by the Taliban and the centre of Afghanistan's massive drugs trade -- a source of funding for the rebels.
The Danish soldier was killed Monday and two other Danes were injured in heavy battles with Taliban fighters alongside British troops near the town of Gereshk, the Danish military said.
Helicopter gunships were called in to the fight, which also involved tanks, heavy artillery and mortars, it said.
The British Marines were killed when an explosion blew up their vehicle on Sunday as they were on a routine patrol further north, British Lieutenant Colonel Simon Millar told AFP.
The blast, the cause of which has not been determined, was near the remote Kajaki Dam, a vital water and power source for Helmand which the British military has held since the Taliban were driven out nearly two years ago.
Most of the 7,500 British soldiers who are part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deployed across Afghanistan are in Helmand, where there are also about 500 Danish troops.
The latest death takes to 36 the number of international soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year. Nearly 220 died last year, most of them in hostile action.
Also Sunday, five Dutch soldiers were wounded, one so seriously that his legs had to be amputated, in two separate explosions in the southern province of Uruzgan, which neighbours Helmand.
A Norwegian base in the north meanwhile came under rocket fire, but there was no damage, ISAF spokesman General Carlos Branco said.
Of the nearly 40 nations in ISAF, about 17 are in the south, which has seen the most intense unrest of an insurgency led by the Taliban, who were in power in Afghanistan before being ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001.
Canada has demanded reinforcements of at least 1,000 soldiers if it is to extend its stay in southern Kandahar province.
That commitment is expected to come at an April 2-4 NATO summit in Bucharest, where Afghanistan will be a key topic.
"We've been saying for some time that all of us need to do more in Afghanistan, and I think you're going to see countries coming up and doing more," US national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday.
Washington has been pushing its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to send more troops to Afghanistan and lift restrictions on those already there to help combat the resurgent Taliban.
Hadley said it was "pretty clear" the NATO summit would yield a strong statement of support for success in Afghanistan, but declined to say which countries would increase their commitments or in what way.
"We need to step it up. I think you'll find the countries are stepping up," especially in strife-torn areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, he said.
Commanders of ISAF, which numbers 47,000 troops, have said the force is about 6,000 to 10,000 troops short what it needs.
Last year was the deadliest of the insurgency, with about 8,000 people killed, according to United Nations' figures. Most of them are rebels who are replaced by men trained in militant bases in Pakistan, officials say.
Several hundred Afghan security forces and about 1,500 civilians have also died in the insurgency.
In other Taliban-linked violence reported Monday, three Afghan guards providing security for a road construction site were killed in a bomb blast in Kandahar, a district chief said.
The Afghan defence ministry said meanwhile a dozen "terrorists" were killed in operations at the weekend in Kandahar and neighbouring Zabul.
