BBC News USA: 7 U.S. Soldiers 7 killed in bomb attacks Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (BBC News Blog) – Seven U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in two separate roadside bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan, NATO said.

No details of the attacks, but witnesses in the southern city of Kandahar, said an armored Humvee, U.S. Army hit a bomb in the afternoon. Several bodies were being removed from the vehicle, which was burned by the explosion.

The deaths bring to 14 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in eastern and southern Afghanistan over the past three days.

An increase in the number of U.S. troops Afghanistan contact has brought more than 120,000 more with the insurgents and an increasing number of deaths. Forty-nine U.S. service members have died in Afghanistan this month, still less than the 66 killed in July.

In eastern Nangarhar province, district chief of Lal Pur, Syad Mohammad Palawan, was killed when a bomb planted in his car exploded as he drove into a government compound to attend a meeting of provincial security and political leaders, said Police spokesman Ghafor Khan.

The insurgents apparently planned the bomb exploded inside the compound of the provincial capital Jalalabad where he potentially could have caused far greater destruction, said Khan.

Three of Palawan’s bodyguards were wounded, Khan said, while the interior ministry put the figure in five years.

The attack came after a failed assault on two coalition bases in neighboring Khost province Saturday, in which more than 30 insurgents were killed. The attacks indicate that militant activity is growing in some parts of this, as coalition forces to concentrate resources in Kandahar and other Taliban strongholds in the south.

Security in Eastern Afghanistan is critical because the region includes the capital, Kabul, the insurgents have tried to surround and isolate the rest of the country. Jalalabad is also just 35 miles west of the border with Pakistan, where militants hold sanctuaries from which to plan attacks and infiltrate foreign fighters linked to al Qaeda through the rugged mountains.

Off shrines has been a key demand of the government of President Hamid Karzai, who on Saturday renewed its criticism of the coalition’s strategy in combating insurgency in Afghanistan – part of a pattern of greater openness by the Afghan leader calls for support among the besieged Afghan public.

In a meeting with President of the German parliament, Norbert Lammert, Karzai said there was a need for “serious” to alter the strategy against the Taliban and other groups linked to Al Qaeda, said the presidential office.

“There should be a review of the strategy in the fight against terrorism, because the experience of the last eight years have shown that the fight in the villages of Afghanistan has been ineffective apart from causing civilian casualties,” Karzai was quoted as saying in a news release.

Karzai has argued in the past Afghan forces should take the lead in operations to root out insurgents and win the support of deeply conservative farmers, home to a long tradition of suspicion of strangers. He says the personal contact between coalition forces and the villagers only generates resentment, but most police and Afghan soldiers are drawn from the Uzbeks and Tajiks from the north who are ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Pashtuns, who form the core of Taliban support.

Last week, Karzai also criticized the U.S. plan to begin withdrawing troops from next July and said the fight against terrorism can not succeed as long as the Taliban and their allies maintain sanctuaries in Pakistan.

Karzai’s comments contradict statements by the commanders of the coalition that an increase in the total number of foreign forces to more than 140,000 has become the momentum of recent advances of the Taliban.

In other operations, NATO said combined coalition and Afghan forces detained several suspected Taliban in Kandahar province, regional commanders, including bomb makers and the insurgents involved in attacks on Saturday on the basis of Chapman Capital and Camp Salerno in Khost. Chapman was the scene of a suicide attack in December that killed seven employees of the CIA.

Moreover, Afghan Defense Ministry reported four soldiers were killed and another wounded on Sunday in a bomb attack in the province of Wardak. A fifth Afghan soldier was killed and another wounded in an attack in the Nad Ali district of Helmand province.

In the southeastern province of Zabul, 24 Taliban traveling by truck and a motorcycle were caught trying to cross the border into Pakistan, said provincial government spokesman, Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar.

Five Taliban, including a regional commander, also died in clashes with coalition forces Sunday in the district of Helmand province Gereshik, according to Daoud Ahmedi, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

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