THREE British soldiers died in Afghanistan yesterday. One of them was killed when a landmine exploded in northern Helmand province; another died in a clash with the Taleban, also in northern Helmand; and the third soldier, from the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, died of wounds he suffered in an incident last Friday.
It was the same incident in which Ranger Anare Draiva, a Fijian soldier, was killed. The family of the soldier was with him when he died in hospital.
In the landmine incident, a British patrol strayed into an unmarked mined area. Five others were “very seriously” injured and another soldier received minor injuries. They have all been moved to a military hospital at Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand.
In the second incident yesterday, in which there was a shoot-out with the Taleban when one soldier was killed, another received serious wounds. He was also taken to the Camp Bastion military hospital.
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Nineteen servicemen have now died in Afghanistan in less than a week. Of those, 14 were on board the RAF Nimrod MR2 that crashed on Saturday.
America’s top military commander in the country told The Times that Nato and the US coalition forces in Afghanistan were now faced with an alliance of three foreign-trained enemy forces, all of whom were affiliated to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda ideology.
Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry, commander of Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan, with 20,000 US soldiers under his wing, said that foreign fighters had come back into Afghanistan and were providing training to all the groups who had now sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda.
President Musharraf of Pakistan arrived in Kabul yesterday to talk about forging closer links between the two nations in countering terrorism and stopping insurgents using the border to cross into each other’s territory.
The head of Nato, accompanied by alliance ambassadors who were also in Kabul yesterday, declared that the alliance would not be deterred by the resurgence of the Taleban.
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Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato Secretary-General, said: “The ongoing violence in some areas will not deter Nato from carrying out its mission.”
He signed a declaration with President Karzai of Afghanistan, pledging Nato’s long-term commitment to his country.
General Eikenberry said,from Kabul, that the alliance linked to al-Qaeda consisted of the Taleban, which he described as a loose confederation of militant Afghans; Haqqani, led by Jalalludin Haqqani, a former Mujahidin commander and a radical Islamist; and HIG, Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a war-lord and long-time associate of bin Laden.
General Eikenberry said these three groups had a symbiotic relationship and were receiving money from abroad.