Roadside Bomb Kills 4 U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan

08/21/2005

By CARLOTTA GALL
NY Times
Published: August 21, 2005

KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 21 - Americans came under attack in two separate incidents today that highlighted the rising violence in Afghanistan just one month ahead of parliamentary elections.

Four American soldiers were killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in southern Afghanistan. In a separate attack, two employees of the United States Embassy were injured when their convoy was hit by an explosion west of the capital, Kabul.

In southern Afghanistan, a religious cleric and another man were killed outside a district mosque in the latest in a series of attacks on pro-government clergy by suspected Taliban insurgents.

Today’s attack brings to 65 the number of American soldiers who have died in Afghanistan this year, making 2005 the deadliest year for the United States military in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001. A total of 181 American soldiers have died in Operation Enduring Freedom in and around Afghanistan since military operations began in October 2001, more than 100 of them in hostile attacks.

The soldiers killed today were taking part in an operation to disrupt enemy forces in the Deychopan district of Zabul Province, an area of continued Taliban activity, the United States military said in a statement. The three were wounded from secondary explosions from ammunition inside the stricken vehicle as they tried to save the men inside, it said.

The attack on the embassy convoy was perhaps more shocking, because it occurred close to Kabul, and was the first such attack in the area and on United States Embassy personnel in Afghanistan. The vehicle hit was part of a two-car convoy traveling on routine business, said the embassy spokesman, Lou Fintor. “Two Americans experienced minor injuries in the explosion and have been treated,” he said. “The incident is under investigation.”

The attack occurred on a dirt road in Paghman, a district to the west of Kabul. Although the area is known for its armed militias and thieves, there have been no roadside bomb attacks there until now. An Afghan security official, who asked not to be named because he was not permitted to speak to the press, said he suspected Taliban elements were responsible rather than local militias, adding that the fundamentalist movement had supporters in every area. A local television station showed footage of the damaged US vehicle with its hood blown off and the windscreen sprayed with dirt, but Afghan officials said that because it was an armored vehicle the passengers suffered only minor injuries.

In other incidents Maulavi Abdullah Malang, head of the religious council in Panjwai district in Kandahar Province, and a close supporter of the Afghan government, was gunned down, along with a villager, outside his mosque just before dawn prayers today, Niaz Muhammad Sarhadi, the local district chief, said in a telephone interview. Three men on a motorbike were seen escaping from the scene, he said. He blamed Taliban supporters for the attack. “They do not want people to cooperate with the government, they do not want good people and educated people,” he said.

Two Afghan police officers were also killed in the neighboring province of Uruzgan, and two fuel trucks destined for an American military base were set alight in the eastern province of Kunar, The Associated Press reported.

The multiple attacks in one day come as senior Afghan officials complained of a sharp increase of militants infiltrating across the border from Pakistan in recent months, most of them Afghans, but also Pakistanis and some members of Al Qaeda.

“The fact that fighters come across the border, that cannot be denied,” the Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdur Rahim Wardak, said in a recent interview. “There are more people crossing on mountain trails,” he said, adding that surveillance of the border areas had shown an increase in numbers infiltrating. Foreign fighters from neighboring countries, Pakistan and Central Asian states, and even from the Middle East and North Africa, have been coming in among them, he said. “Dozens have been captured in the last two to three months,” he said.

“The main security issue is the significant increase of cross-border infiltration - it has been continuing for the last two years but in the last three months it has increased and is much more organized,” said another senior security official, who asked that he not be identified because of the nature of his job.

Intelligence also indicated that Al Qaeda was paying renewed attention to Afghanistan this year, he said. There is more money coming in, probably from Arab countries, and a unit of Qaeda fighters has returned to the region from Iraq to teach local fighters “a new tactic they learnt in Iraq,” the security official said. He said the new tactic was not specified. The defense minister said that the Taliban was claiming it had acquired new anti-aircraft missiles.

The immediate target of the insurgents would seem to be the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, the Afghan officials said. There have already been attacks on election workers and candidates, but the violence has reached wider, with more than half a dozen religious clerics and tribal elders also murdered since May.

More than 40 Afghan National Army soldiers have been killed in combat since March, the defense minister said.

More than 50 police officers were killed in just the two months of June and July, Interior Ministry figures showed. Afghan officials said they were expecting more violence, in the forms of bomb blasts in the major cities, assassinations of candidates and election officials and other “soft” targets, and armed attacks on polling stations or local government offices.

Pakistanis who have been arrested recently and Taliban fighters who have surrendered to the government under an amnesty program have described similar plans in recent interviews.

The Afghan officials said it has become increasingly clear in recent weeks that the elections are not the only target and they accused Pakistan, in particular, of supporting a long-term strategy of destabilization in Afghanistan to keep the country weak. “Maybe they see a stable Afghanistan as a threat to themselves,” the security official said.