Death of 4 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan sets casualty mark

Washington Post

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan — A roadside bomb that struck an American military convoy in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday killed four U.S. soldiers, breaking a threshold that makes 2009 the deadliest year for international forces here since the war began in late 2001.

The attack occurred while the Americans were patrolling in Kandahar province, the U.S. military said, on the same day that a massive explosion struck Kandahar city, the provincial capital. As many as 40 people were killed and at least 100 injured in that blast, which also destroyed dozens of buildings, including homes and the offices of a Japanese construction company, provincial officials said.

It was unclear whether the source of the blast was a single bomb or several smaller ones detonated simultaneously, but several officials and residents described a single explosion.

“People in Kandahar haven’t heard an explosion like this in the past eight years,” said Khalid Pash- tun, a member of the provincial parliament.

In recent months, President Barack Obama has sent tens of thousands of additional troops to southern Afghanistan, one of the most violent regions in the country, to try to quell a growing Taliban insurgency there.

With four months left in the year, the deaths of the four U.S. soldiers Tuesday pushed the 2009 toll for NATO-led coalition troops to 295, one more than died in all of 2008, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of the total this year, 172 of those killed were Americans.

The death toll for international troops in Afghanistan has risen every year since 2003, and U.S. military officials attribute this year’s rise to the strengthening Taliban insurgency coupled with the jump in the number of American forces battling them. Unlike during the most violent days of the Iraq war, where the advent of a deadly new weapon — the bomb- propelled molten metal slugs that U.S. military officials said were imported from Iran — led to a rise in casualties there, the Taliban has not relied on new technology to inflict harm.

“It’s not the sophistication. That really hasn’t been a factor here,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, a U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan. “Here you still are talking about very basic but very deadly IEDs — that’s the largest killer of the force.”

The Taliban is using these roadside bombs “indiscriminately,” Smith said, in attacks that also kill large numbers of Afghan civilians. He said the increased violence is a result of the Taliban, a predominantly Afghan conglomeration of insurgent groups working alongside other foreign fighters, exerting influence in a growing portion of the country.