Insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan left 13 people dead, 10 of them private security guards escorting a NATO supply convoy, officials said on Thursday. Meanwhile, a German engineer held hostage by the Taliban for more than a month appeared on a private Afghan television, coughing and holding his chest while appealing for help. “I am a prisoner of the Taliban,” said the man, who identified himself as Rudolf Blechschmidt. “We live in the mountains, very high in a very bad condition, please help us.” Tolo TV did not say how it obtained the video, and there was no indication of when it was shot. The German Foreign Ministry in Berlin said they were checking its contents.
The ambush on the NATO-supply convoy took place in southern Zabul province. A large group of Taliban attacked the trucks, killing at least 10 private security guards and destroying three vehicles, said Mohammad Salim, an official with the security company, who witnessed the attack.
In Helmand province, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein said insurgents triggered a remote-controlled bomb, hitting his convoy. He said he was unhurt in the attack but that three civilians were killed and 13 wounded.
On Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed two Canadian troops and an Afghan interpreter travelling in an armoured vehicle in Kandahar province, a former Taliban stronghold. A Canadian radio reporter was also injured in the attack. The casualties - from Quebec provinceÂ’s Royal 22nd Regiment - bring to 69 the number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2002. Canada has about 2,300 soldiers in the country, mainly operating in Kandahar province.
Separately, the Afghan intelligence said that it had detained a teenage militant who detonated a bomb, which killed three German nationals in the capital. Two German police officers and a foreign ministry employee were killed when the remote control device blew up their vehicle on a road in the outskirts of Kabul a week ago.