KABUL, 6 December 2005 — Hostile fire forced two US helicopters to make emergency landings in volatile southern Afghanistan, injuring five US soldiers and an Afghan, the US military said yesterday as three Afghan troops were wounded by a remote-controlled bomb.
Another improvised bomb exploded between a patrol of Dutch peacekeepers in the northern province of Baghland but none was hurt while a civilian mine clearer was killed removing an explosive at the military airport in Kabul, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said. The bomb that wounded the three Afghan soldiers was detonated in volatile southern Zabul province as their patrol passed on the way to investigate a tip-off about a hide-out of Taleban militants, provincial spokesman Gulab Shaha Alikhil said.
Meanwhile the US military said two of its Chinook heavy-lift choppers that were forced to make emergency landings in the insurgency-hit south on Sunday had both “received enemy fire.”
The choppers were involved in US-led coalition operations against Taleban rebels and other militants. The coalition was investigating what kind of weapons were used against the helicopters, Lt. Col. Laurent Fox, a spokesman for the 20,000 strong coalition, told reporters yesterday.
The first helicopter landed at a forward operating base in Uruzgan province, wounding an Afghan soldier, and the second in neighboring Kandahar, slightly injuring five US soldiers, Fox said.
Both areas are hotbeds for attacks by militants loyal to the Taleban regime ousted in a US-led invasion in 2001. Purported Taleban spokesmen have recently claimed the hard-liners have received new anti-aircraft missiles.
A man claiming to be a spokesman for the Taleban said in a telephone call on Sunday that the militia had shot down the helicopter near Kandahar. His links to the group could not be independently verified.
Since being toppled in a US-led operations in November 2001 for sheltering Osama Bin Laden, the Taleban have taken up an increasingly bloody insurgency against the new US-backed government and its allies. A suicide bomber blew himself up near a US-led military convoy in volatile Kandahar on Sunday, killing a civilian and wounding a coalition soldier. The Canadian Defense Ministry confirmed a Canadian soldier was wounded lightly in a suicide attack in Kandahar Sunday.
It was the eighth suicide attack in Afghanistan in just over two months, several of them targeted at coalition troops and those with ISAF.
Also Sunday, three US troops were wounded when an improvised bomb exploded near their convoy in Zabul. They were in a stable condition, the coalition said. Afghan and coalition forces had meanwhile since Friday broken up two cells that were assembling and planting such improvised bombs, and arrested five suspects, the coalition said in a statement.
Explosives and bomb-making materials were also confiscated, it said. Violence linked to the insurgency has claimed about 1,500 lives this year, including several militants killed in clashes with security forces.
