Canadian troops kill up to 20 Taliban
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Canadian troops killed up
to 20 Taliban insurgents who were preparing to ambush a
military convoy in southern Afghanistan, a Canadian military
spokesman said on Monday.
Violence has intensified in Afghanistan in recent months
with scores of people killed in clashes and roadside and
suicide blasts as NATO members, including Canada and Britain,
build up troop numbers in the dangerous south.
“Our convoy using night-vision optics on their vehicle were
able to see three vehicles preparing for an ambush,” Canadian
spokesman, Major Marc Theriault, said of the Saturday night
clash.
The convoy was traveling to a forward operating base in the
Sangin district of Helmand province when the insurgents were
spotted, he said.
Canadian forces attacked and destroyed the three vehicles
which contained 15 to 20 insurgents, he said. No Canadians were
hurt.
Canada has about 2,200 troops based in the southern
province of Kandahar, who, for now, are part of a U.S.-led
force battling insurgents and hunting for their leaders.
The Canadians, and about 3,300 British troops who are going
to be based in Helmand, will come under the command of a NATO
peacekeeping force, when the NATO expands into the south, which
is expected in late July.
A blast hit a foreign military convoy in Kandahar on
Monday, slightly wounding two foreign soldiers, one of them an
American, Afghan police and a U.S. military spokeswoman said.
Police officer Raz Mohammad said a suicide attacker in a
car rammed a military vehicle but the U.S. military spokeswoman
said the blast was caused by a roadside bomb. She did not know
the nationality of the second wounded person.
In a separate incident, a suicide attacker in a car rammed
a foreign military vehicle in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan
province, to the north of Kandahar, wounding a U.S. soldier and
killing two civilians, Afghan officials said.
Four Canadian soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb blast
in another part of Kandahar on April 22.