Seven US soldiers were killed in attacks across Afghanistan today, including four in one bombing in the north, amid a rise in violence as the US military pushed ahead with a big new offensive, officials said.
In southern Kandahar, a suicide bomber also killed two people when he drove a car packed with explosives towards a line of truck drivers waiting to supply foreign troops at a key base in a province long considered the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.
In Zabul, north of Kandahar, two more US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb, a US military spokesman said. Kandahar is adjacent to Helmand province, where thousands of Marines launched a new assault last week to wrest the initiative from the Taliban in a province which supplies most of the opium poppy that funds the insurgency.
The roadside bombing in Kunduz province was the worst security incident involving foreign troops in the north for several weeks. Northern Afghanistan is considered relatively safe compared with Taliban strongholds in the south and east.
Kunduz police chief Abdul Razaaq said two Afghan civilians were also killed. Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo, a spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, confirmed the dead soldiers in Kunduz were American but gave no further details.
In eastern Paktia, another US soldier was killed during an engagement with insurgents.
The US Marines are the biggest wave of 17,000 new combat troops ordered into Afghanistan by US President Barack Obama by the end of this year as part of his new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan.
The Helmand offensive, Operation Strike of the Sword, was launched at a time when insurgency-related violence was at its highest since the Taliban's austere Islamist government was ousted in 2001 for failing to hand over al-Qaeda leaders wanted over the September 11th attacks on the United States.
Reuters