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Two US soldiers and dozens of Afghan insurgents killed

Two American soldiers die in fighting as US Defence Secretary arrives in capital for meetings with Afghan leader

  • AP
  • Published: 00:00 September 3, 2010
  • Gulf News

Arrested Taliban suspects and confiscated arms and ammunition are shown to the media
  • Image Credit: AP
  • Arrested Taliban suspects and confiscated arms and ammunition are shown to the media at a police compound in Ghazni, east of Kabul, on Thursday.

Kabul: Two American soldiers died in fighting in Afghanistan on Thursday, while Nato and local officials said coalition and Afghan forces killed at least 37 insurgents in a series of ground and air engagements.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, arrived in Afghanistan's capital for meetings with President Hamid Karzai and top Nato commander General David Petraeus.

Gates flew yesterday morning to Kabul from Baghdad, where he participated in ceremonies marking the formal close of the US combat mission in Iraq. The Pentagon chief also plans to visit US troops in Afghanistan.

Nato said one US service member was killed in the country's east and the other in the south — regions where fighting between the coalition and Taliban insurgents has been at its most intense. No other details were given in keeping with standard Nato procedure.

Spike in casualties

The deaths bring to three the number of US service members killed in September and follows a spike in casualties during the last two weeks of August that saw the monthly total rise to 55.

The August figure was still below the back-to-back monthly records of 66 in July and 60 in June, although total US combat deaths in January-August of this year — 316 — exceeded the previous annual record of 304 for the whole of 2009.

Nato said coalition forces beat back an attack on a combat outpost in Paktika province's Barmal district along the mountainous border with Pakistan, killing at least 20 insurgents.

Defenders first returned fire with mortars and small arms before calling in an air assault, the alliance said in a statement, adding that no Nato or Afghan government forces were killed.

Nato also said it had killed or wounded as many as 12 insurgents, including two commanders, in an airstrike yesterday on a car travelling along back roads in northwestern Takhar province's Rustaq district.

However, the office of President Karzai, who has repeatedly warned that civilian casualties undermine anti-insurgency efforts, issued a statement condemning the attack, saying 10 campaign workers had instead been killed and two injured. The alliance said it was aware of Karzai's claim and was investigating.

Further east in Ghazni province's Andar district, five other insurgents were killed in an airstrike as they were placing a roadside bomb, Nato said.

That followed an incident in nearby Khost province on Wednesday in which a suicide car bomber attempted to ram a coalition patrol, but managed only to set off his bomb's initiation device, killing himself but failing to detonate his explosives.

In volatile Helmand province to the south, coalition and Afghan forces killed 11 insurgents and captured four, including a regional Taliban shadow district governor, Mulla Sayed Gul, responsible for ordering attacks and dispensing funds, the provincial governor said.

Nato said it used another airstrike in Paktika to kill the leader of an insurgent cell responsible for laying roadside bombs and smuggling foreign fighters into the country.

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