Taliban down Nato ‘copter; 4 US soldiers dead

KABUL: Taliban militants shot down a Nato helicopter in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday killing four US servicemen and bringing to 23 the number of foreign soldiers killed in escalating violence this week.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) helicopter came down in Helmand province, a stronghold of Taliban fighters trying to topple the Western-backed government and eject the 130,000 US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan. “The helicopter was brought down by hostile fire,” a military spokesman said, announcing the toll. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Breasseale confirmed that the dead soldiers were American. Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, telephoned AFP from an undisclosed location to claim responsibility, saying: “We brought it down with a rocket. It crashed in the Sangin district bazaar.”

In a separate incident, at least 39 people were killed and 73 wounded in an explosion at a wedding in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, a senior official in the province told AFP. Twenty-three Nato soldiers have died since Sunday, including 10 on Monday, the deadliest day in combat for US-led forces in Afghanistan in two years, with seven Americans, two Australians and a French soldier killed.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2010.