Friday, September 04, 2009 KUNDUZ: An air strike carried out by the NATO force in Afghanistan targeted a fuel tanker hijacked by Taliban insurgents causing dozens of casualties on Friday, officials and witnesses said. "Last night, the Taliban tried to take a fuel tanker that they hijacked on the highway to Angorbagh village," said Baryalai Basharyar Parwani, police chief of the Ali Abad district in northern Kunduz province."The fuel tanker got stuck in the river. There were local civilians with them as well. The Taliban were bombed. More than 60 people have been killed and injured," he said.A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) under NATO told foreign news agency: "It was an ISAF air strike."
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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