Posted on 07/13/2008 10:16:53 AM PDT by kristinn
At least eight US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in clashes with Taleban militants.
US commander Daniel Dwyer told the BBC the soldiers had been killed in clashes in the north-east of the country.
The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says it is one of the biggest single losses in a day for the coalition since the start of military operations there.
The attack came as international and Afghan security forces battled militants on several fronts.
On Sunday, US forces said 40 insurgents had been killed in Helmand province in the past 24 hours.
There are conflicting reports as to where the latest attack took place.
A foreign military spokesman said US soldiers and members of the Afghan National Army came under attack in Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan.
But Afghan officials insist the fighting took place in neighbouring Nuristan Province.
Nato reported that a small American Combat Outpost in Dara-I-Pech district of Kunar Province, came under heavy fire at around 04.30 local time.
It said insurgents had fired "with small arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars using homes, shops and the mosque in the village of Wanat for cover."
Local officials say a number of civilians and militants were killed in the attack.
Our correspondent says there are frequent attacks in the area.
In a separate incident on Sunday, a suicide bomber killed at least 21 people, many of them children, in a market in the Deh Rawud district of Uruzgan province.
Fox is quoting the AP saying 9 soldiers were killed in an attack involving machine guns and mortars.
Prayers up
I sure hope the attackers were read their Miranda rights and didn’t have their phones tapped without a court order.
Something’s not right with this story. While I’m not doubting the casualty count, something very bad happened that will probably result in some heads rolling in the U.S. Army’s high command there.
While the Taliban has been suffering enormous casualties for the last year in Helmand and the south, the most hard-core Taliban and Al Qaeda regulars have been in the northeast, adjacent to Kunar, and attacks from that direction have been predicted for a long time. We definitely need more resources up there.
"The ensuing fight led ANSF (Afghanistan National Security Forces) and coalition forces to return fire and call for precision air strikes,'' it said.
"At least 40 militants have been killed in the last two days, while over 30 enemy boats and several ... bridges were also destroyed on the Helmand River.''
Prayers up for these soldiers and their families.
Some number of soldiers curently assigned to Iraq ar possibly being reassigned to Afghanistan. Pakistan needs to understand that this escalation is their fault.
The AP report mentioned by Fox said the attack came from houses and a mosque.
Our prayers go out to the families of those brave soldiers. However, for the BBC to call these losses “heavy” is misleading. US Heavy losses are:
Antietam: North: One Day: 2108
South: Same Day: 1,546
D Day: 1465 Dead
Those are heavy casualties for a single day of fighting. God bless our troops and give us the wisdom to keep things in perspective.
I think we’ve reached the point with the tribal regions on the Pak-Afghan border that we should just start bombing the crap out those Taliban strongholds in Pakistan until they are destroyed.
Thanks for finding this- I was looking for a NON AP link for this story to post.
Thanks and prayers to our soldiers and their familes.
Pure and simple self-defense at this point.
Prayers for the families.
estimates range from 2,500 to more than 5,000 dead on D-Day.
Remember the prison break? Something like 400 prisoners got free. Wasn’t that in Afghanistan?
F*ng cowards we're fighting there. Come out and die like a man if you have the guts!
Yes Northern ‘Stan, it resulted in the first known casualty of the war for us....a Southern boy named Spann......ex-marine...left behind a family with several little kids I think.
He was a first-on-the-ground hire by the CIA working with the Northern Alliance.
That was an ancient prison where the bad guys were being held and it was also where Johnny Jihad the Marin County Lib Raised Brat was complicit in Spann’s death by not alerting him when he knew the prisoner revolt was coming. Spann was killed by a mob....they tore and beat him to death. Typical of Kush savages.
Mazar-i-Sharif was the place.
From Google
“Almost 133000 troops from England, Canada and the United States landed on D-Day. Casualties from the three countries during the landing numbered 10300. ...”
www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/dday/ddaypage.html
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