A French soldier and around 10 Taliban fighters were killed in an early morning ambush and subsequent firefight during a joint operation on Tuesday with the Afghan army in Kapisa province, officials said.
A statement from Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault’s office said a French soldier died and another was wounded “during a clash with insurgents” and that the wounded soldier was expected to survive.
The statement said the soldiers were from the elite 13th Chasseurs Alpin Battalion. The dead soldier was “part of an assistance team advising Afghan units”, a statement from President Francois Hollande’s office said. The French military in Paris said around 130 French soldiers came under small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade attack at around 6am while securing an area near a bridge outside Tagab village.
Chief-of-staff spokesman Bertrand Bonneau said around 10 Taliban were killed during the firefight that followed the ambush and that an Afghan soldier was also wounded. Two wounded French soldiers were airlifted to Kabul but one died en route, the military said.
NATO base: Meanwhile, a powerful suicide truck bomb exploded at a NATO military base south of Kabul on Tuesday, wounding three soldiers and at least 17 civilians, Afghan police said.
Just hours earlier, a Taliban bomb killed nine people and wounded five when it struck a minibus on the western outskirts of Kabul, amid growing unrest in areas neighbouring the Afghan capital.
A spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force confirmed “there has been an explosion outside an ISAF facility in Logar province” and that some troops were wounded.
“We have information that ISAF members were wounded but it is our policy not to confirm the number or condition of the injured,” he said, adding that the cause of the explosion was under investigation. Provincial police chief Ghulam Sakhi Rogh Lewanai told AFP, “A truck loaded with explosives detonated at the coalition forces’ camp in (the provincial capital) Puli Alam city. So far we have information that 17 Afghan civilians and three ISAF soldiers have been injured.” Most of the civilians worked at the base, he said. ISAF said the explosion was outside the base, near an Afghan bazaar. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack, some 70 kilometres south of Kabul.
“At around 9am one of our mujahideen carried out a suicide truck bomb attack on a big US forces’ camp resulting in many deaths and injuries,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a text message. President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack on the minibus near the capital, saying nine people had been killed, updating an earlier toll of eight.
Donkey bomb: Separately, a bomb strapped to a donkey by Taliban insurgents killed an Afghan district police chief and wounded three others, an official said
on Tuesday.
The explosive-laden donkey was tied to a bridge near the gate of the local government headquarters in Charsada, in impoverished central Ghor province, before police chief Gul Ahmad arrived at work on Monday, the official said. “When the district police chief’s vehicle was passing, the bomb was exploded by remote control, killing the police chief on the spot,” provincial spokesman Abdulhai Khatibi told AFP.
Three other policemen were injured, he said,
blaming the attack on Taliban militants.
