Friday, November 20, 2009 KABUL: Two coalition troops have been killed in bomb blast and clashes in Afghanistan belonging to UK and Denmark. The British Ministry of Defence has announced that a soldier from the Royal Military Police has been killed in southern Afghanistan. The ministry said on Wednesday that the soldier was killed during operations in the Babaji area in Helmand province. Lieutenant Colonel David Wakefield, a spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said, "It is with deep sadness I must inform you that a soldier from The Royal Military Police was shot and killed." The death brings the number of the British soldiers killed in Afghanistan to 235 since the US-led invasion in 2001. Ninety-eight British service personnel have lost their lives in 2009 alone, making it the bloodiest year for the UK troops since the Falklands War in 1982. On the other hand a Danish soldier seriously wounded in a bomb explosion in Afghanistan in late October died on Wednesday, the Danish armed forces announced.Rune Westy Zacharias Nielsen, 22, was on foot patrol when the blast occurred near his unit's Barakzai base, in southern Helmand province, where Taliban insurgents are active.His death brought to 27 the number of Danish troops killed since international forces deployed in Afghanistan in late 2001 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States.More than 700 Danish soldiers are taking part in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Most of them are under British command
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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