KABUL, 5 June 2005 — Two US soldiers were killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan, the military said yesterday, capping a bloody week in which more than 60 people died in a wave of violence, including a mosque bombing that was the country’s worst attack in two years. The two soldiers were killed and a third wounded in insurgency-wracked southeastern Paktika province when an improvised bomb exploded as their vehicle was passing, the US military said in a statement.
An Afghan interpreter was also wounded in the blast. The wounded were evacuated to a US military base at Salerno in neighboring Khost province, the statement said.
In a separate attack in southern Zabul province, two Taleban fighters were killed and four wounded during an hour-long gunbattle after they ambushed a police convoy. “During a one-hour battle, two Taleban were killed and four were wounded after the Taleban ambushed a government police unit who were evacuating a local engineer from Mizan to Qalat,” Mizan district chief Rahmattullah Khan told AFP. He said no police or government soldiers were wounded. Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi claimed responsibility for the ambush and said the Taleban had killed seven policemen, speaking to AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Earlier in the day, four people were arrested carrying AK-47 assault rifles, 10 anti-tank mines and bomb making equipment in the same district after police launched a manhunt following the gunfight, Khan told AFP. Three years after their ouster by a US-led military campaign, remnants of the Taleban regime continue to wage a hit-and-run guerrilla campaign in the south and east of the country. Nearly 150 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since in the operation launched in late 2001 that toppled the former Taleban regime after it failed to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, wanted for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in Washington and New York.
In another development, Afghans have deluged a telephone helpline set up to collect information that could lead to the release of an Italian aid worker abducted almost three weeks ago, the interior ministry said. “The Afghan public has been very helpful and supportive thus far in the efforts to free Clementina (Cantoni),” Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said in a statement. “We have received hundreds of calls at the helpline that was set up shortly after Clementina’s abduction, and the police are following up on all leads.”
