Friday, August 07, 2009 KANDAHAR: Afghan violence left 17 people dead including wedding-goers and five US soldiers in new attacks ahead of elections as the NATO chief Thursday visited insurgent hotspots in the south. A wave of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan has raised fears that violence will mar presidential and provincial council elections on August 20 and damage the credibility of the polls. A bomb ripped through a trailer taking villagers to a wedding and towed by a farm tractor -- a common mode of transport in rural Afghanistan -- in the southern province of Helmand on Wednesday, authorities said. Several officials initially said 21 people were killed, including children and women, and five others wounded. But by evening provincial police chief Assadullah Shairzad had dropped the death toll to five, saying the first information was incorrect.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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