Two foreign troopers fall in Afghanistan Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:52:07 GMT

Two foreign troopers with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have died in Afghanistan in two separate incidents.

In one incident, an explosive device kills a Danish soldier and injures two others in Afghanistan's restive Helmand province, Denmark's military said.

The incident took place on Friday when their vehicle hit the device. Three other Danish soldiers also received minor injuries. All the injured have been transferred at a field hospital and are undergoing treatment, the military statement said.

Helmand province is a Taliban stronghold in the south of the country.

The killing raises the Danish military's death toll to 29 since international forces were deployed in Afghanistan in late 2001.

This Scandinavian country of 5.5 million people has suffered more deaths than any other country proportionally to the number of troops it has in ISAF.

More than 700 Danish troops are taking part in NATO's ISAF in Afghanistan.

In another incident, a young Spanish soldier died of his injuries sustained during an accident at a vehicle maintenance site at the Spanish military base in Herat Province.

An investigation has been launched to clarify the circumstances of the accident, which caused the death of 24-year-old Christian Quishpe Aguirre, who is of Ecuadorian descent.

Reports say he was run over by a vehicle and died later on Friday.

His death comes two days after a poll published in the Spanish daily El Mundo showed that Spaniards are largely opposed to the government's decision to send a further 500 troops to Afghanistan.

Over 47 percent considered the decision "bad" or "very bad", 26 percent judged it "normal" and only 22 percent felt the decision was "good" or "very good."

Spain's 1,068 troops currently in Afghanistan are located in the west of the country.

FTP/MMN

Suicide bomber kills 7 in east Afghanistan market

By Amir Shah, Associated Press Writer –

Thu Jan 7, 2010, 8:58 pm ET

KABUL –

A suicide bomber killed seven people at a busy bazaar in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, and a bomb hidden in a garbage container outside a provincial governor's compound slightly wounded the official, authorities said.

The attacks were in Paktia and Khost provinces, both of which border Pakistan and suffer frequent violence as Taliban fighters gain momentum in their fight against Afghan and international troops.

In Gardez, the capital of Paktia province to the south, a suicide bomber on foot blew himself up in a bazaar near a six-vehicle convoy of security workers, said Deputy Gov. Abdul Rahman Mangal. He said seven people were killed, including the commander of Afghan security guards at a base for a provincial reconstruction team in Logar province. Another 24 were wounded, he said.

Such teams are joint civilian-military units that secure and develop areas of Afghanistan.

In Khost, Gov. Tahr Khan Sabari was cut by glass from windows shattered in the blast but not seriously injured, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary told The Associated Press. Sabari's spokesman Arifullah Pashton said five other people, including two journalists who were meeting with the governor, also were slightly wounded.

Khost is one of Afghanistan's most troubled provinces. Seven CIA employees were killed Dec. 30 when a suicide bomber attacked an agency base there. On Wednesday, at least 15 people were wounded in a blast outside a shop in Khost city, the provincial center.

Earlier Thursday, three rockets were fired into a residential area of Kabul, wounding three civilians. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that two of the rockets hit a house and the third landed in a garden. Local police said the attack was in the Qalafa neighborhood, about three miles (five kilometers) southeast of central Kabul.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But NATO's Afghan operation pointed the finger at the Taliban.

In the eastern city of Jalalabad, about 5,000 demonstrators gathered to protest the Wednesday deaths of children in an explosion that they blamed on U.S. forces. Local officials said four children were killed, but NATO said Thursday that two died and that international troops were not responsible.

The blast about 15 miles (25 kilometers) south of Jalalabad, tore through a group of soldiers and civilians while the soldiers were visiting a road-construction project. Some 80 civilians and three soldiers were wounded.

Afghan police said the blast was caused by a passing police vehicle hitting a mine, but the protesters blamed it on the U.S. soldiers. They shouted "Death to America" and burned an effigy of President Barack Obama.

"While we continue to believe these casualties were not caused by ISAF operations, we will continue to assist our Afghan friends and partners," the forces' deputy chief of staff for operations, U.S. Maj. Gen. Michael Regner, said in a statement.

Since the CIA attack in Khost province, suspected U.S. drones have carried out five strikes in Pakistan's neighboring North Waziristan region. The area is believed to be a hide-out for militants involved in the attack.

The latest strikes, on Wednesday, killed 13 people.

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Associated Press writer Jim Heintz in Kabul contributed to this report.

Afghan police: Rocket hits US consulate

Fri Jan 8, 2010, 1:29 pm ET

KABUL –

Afghan police say a rocket has hit the new U.S. consulate office in Herat in western Afghanistan, but no casualties were reported.

Akramueein Yawar, the commander of the Afghan National Police in the western region of the country, says three rockets were fired at the building housing the new consulate, but only one hit the building. He says the rocket hit the second floor of the building, shattering glass.

He says no U.S. staff were inside the building at the time of the attack.

The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, on Dec. 16 signed an agreement with the governor of Herat province to lease a hotel to be used as a new U.S. consulate in western Afghanistan.

KABUL (AP) —

Roadside bombs have killed eight Afghan soldiers and a U.S. service member in separate incidents in Afghanistan, officials said Friday.

NATO confirmed the American died Thursday in eastern Afghanistan, but provided no other details.

Also Thursday, an Afghan army vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan. Army commander Abdul Hamid said eight soldiers who were inside the vehicle were killed as they were returning from the provincial capital of Tarin Kot.

In Logar province, south of Kabul, two local intelligence guards were killed Friday at a dog fight in the provincial capital of Pul-e Alam, said Mustafa Mosseini, chief of police in the province. He said a suspected suicide bomber entered the dog fight and opened fire, killing the two guards. Other intelligence officers killed the gunman, who never detonated his alleged cache.

In southern Afghanistan, NATO said Afghan and international forces on Friday found a truck filled with 10 tons of fertilizer containing ammonium nitrate, a chemical often used in making explosives. The troops destroyed the fertilizer in southern Kandahar province, returned the truck to the owner and compensated him for the fertilizer.