A suicide attacker killed a French soldier in Kabul and | About 40 Taliban rebels were killed in Afghanistan on Friday on the United NationsÂ’ International Day of Peace. |
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The Al Qaeda-linked Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, the first inside the heavily barricaded city in three weeks. It also wounded six Afghans. The French military, which has around 1,000 soldiers in Afghanistan as part of a 37-nation NATO-led force, confirmed that its soldiers were struck. “One of them died,” squadron leader Jean-Philippe Mouille told AFP.
A witness, Jan Mohammad, told AFP he saw five foreign soldiers being carried away after the blast but could not say if they were dead or wounded.
Weapons destroyed: Soldiers led by the US military struck militant hideouts in Helmand province early Friday, killing about 40 rebels and destroying one of the largest caches of weapons it has ever found, the US-led coalition said. The coalition said about 40 “anti-coalition militants” were killed in the operation. “This was one of the largest caches of weapons found to date,” coalition spokesman Major Christopher Belcher said. “Several rooms were found filled with small-arms, explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and large-calibre ammunition,” he said.
NATOÂ’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) admitted separately that it had killed civilians in the course of a new anti-Taliban operation launched in Helmand on Wednesday. It did not give a figure but a district governor said six civilians, most of them women and children, were killed in an airstrike against Taliban fighters during the course of the operation.
Iran aid: Iran is supplying powerful roadside bomb-making components to militants in Afghanistan in an effort to embarrass the US and push American forces out of the country, the head of US Central Command said on Friday, reported AP. Admiral William Fallon said Iran is providing development assistance in western Afghanistan, which he labelled helpful. But he said Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is also supplying roadside bomb parts for the type of sophisticated and deadly bombs found in Iraq known as “explosively formed penetrators”.
“The Iranians are clearly supplying some amount of lethal aid,” Fallon said. “There is no doubt ... that agents from Iran are involved in aiding the insurgency.”
Iran has denied that it is supplying arms to fighters in Afghanistan. Fallon said Iran is trying to ensure that it has a role in the region’s politics. “And I think they put a priority on causing us as much frustration as they can,” he said. The ISAF has said that three shipments of weapons emanating from Iran have been intercepted in Afghanistan since the spring. Fallon said the US was carefully watching the flow of weapons from Iran, and that border interdiction efforts may need to be increased.