AFGHANISTAN:Guerrilla attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan will rise this year in the face of a growing Nato presence, the alliance's top operations commander said yesterday.
A suicide bomber targeting a foreign military convoy killed 37 civilians near the Pakistan border yesterday, a day after more than 100 people were killed in the deadliest suspected suicide raid since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001.
"The numbers will go up," said Nato Supreme Allied Commander Europe John Craddock, who told of guerrilla attacks by Taliban and other insurgents on the 43,000-plus Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Apart from suicide bomber attacks, Cmdr Craddock singled out roadside bombs as a potential source of rising danger for Nato.
Cmdr Craddock rejected suggestions, most recently from British politician Paddy Ashdown, that Nato was in disarray.
He insisted that the rise in guerrilla attacks was because the Taliban had realised they could not take the alliance on in direct warfare.
"If we see any offensive [ this year] it is going to be ISAF's offensive, just like last year," he added at the news conference at Nato's military headquarters in southern Belgium. -
