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Bomb, helicopter crash kills 2 U.S. troops, 4 Afghans
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 17 - 01 - 2009


A suicide car bomb killed a U.S.
soldier and four Afghan civilians in the Afghan capital on
Saturday, and one other U.S. soldier was killed when a
helicopter crash-landed in eastern Afghanistan, officials said, according to Reuters.
The bomber penetrated tight security in the heart of Kabul,
blowing himself up outside a U.S. base and the German embassy
days before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Barack
Obama who has pledged to make Afghanistan a foreign policy
priority.
One U.S. soldier died in hospital of injuries received from
the blast, and six U.S. soldiers and a U.S. civilian were
wounded, the U.S. military said in a statement. Four Afghan
civilians were killed and 19 wounded, the Interior Ministry
said.
Minutes after the blast, a sewage tanker and several cars
were ablaze and there were blood stains on the road as police
loaded bodies and wounded onto the back of pick-up trucks and
ferried them to nearby hospitals, a Reuters witness said.
Taliban militants, fighting to overthrow the Western-backed
Afghan government and drive out foreign troops, claimed
responsibility for the blast.
The austere Islamist movement, driven from power by U.S.-led
forces in 2001 for sheltering al Qaeda leaders behind the Sept.
11, attacks, has launched hundreds of suicide attacks in the
last two years, but some 80 percent of the victims are
civilians.
In the northeast of the country, close to the border with
Pakistan, one U.S. soldier was killed when a U.S. military
Chinook helicopter, carrying seven personnel, made a crash
landing, the U.S. military said.
"Though the cause of the landing is currently undetermined,
small arms fire was present at the time of the incident," a U.S.
military statement said.
Villagers nearby, in the Korengal valley of Kunar province,
told Reuters it looked like the helicopter had been shot down
and smoke was billowing from the scene of the crash.
While the Taliban often take pot-shots at military
helicopters, they have so far lacked the sophisticated
surface-to-air missiles capable of posing a major threat to air
transport which U.S. and NATO forces rely heavily on to
transport troops and supplies around the rugged and mountainous
country.
Elsewhere, another suicide car bomber killed a civilian, and
wounded three more and three policemen in a village in the
eastern province of Nangarhar, a provincial spokesman said.
Obama is expected to approve a request from commanders to
double the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan from the 30,000
at present to counter the Taliban insurgency which has spread
its influence from the south and east to the fringes of Kabul.
The Taliban were able to regroup and relaunch their
insurgency in mid-2005 after, analysts say, President George W.
Bush's administration "took its eye off the ball" in Afghanistan
by diverting crucial troops and resources to Iraq.
The Taliban's campaign of guerrilla attacks and suicide
bombings is aimed at demonstrating to ordinary Afghans that the
Afghan government and its Western backers cannot bring security
to the nation that has suffered nearly 30 years of war.


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