8 NATO troops, 6 Afghan children killed

THE NEW YORK TIMES

KABUL, Afghanistan ? NATO said eight of its service members died in three attacks in southern Afghanistan, and an Afghan official on Friday identified four of the dead as U.S. soldiers.

The attacks Thursday and Friday struck at the heart of Afghanistan's turbulent south. They come just as the U.S.-led NATO command is gradually handing over security responsibility to the Afghan government after a decade of war.

And the Taliban this week said they were ready to open a political office in Qatar, apparently a signal that they may be ready for formal peace talks.

Southern Afghanistan was the focus of the Obama administration's troop surge in 2010, and U.S. forces have made significant gains against the Taliban in many districts that had been thick with insurgents.

But the Taliban nonetheless remain potent in the south, especially in Kandahar, the province where the movement began in the mid-1990s.

NATO said four troops were killed by a roadside bomb Friday, but it didn't identify them.

Bacha Khan, the governor of Shah Wali Kot district in Kandahar province, said four U.S. soldiers died and one was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded while the soldiers were on morning patrol with the Afghan police.

NATO said another service member was killed separately Friday in what it described as an insurgent attack.

A roadside bomb also killed three service members on Thursday, NATO said, giving no more details.

The deaths brought to 10 the number of coalition troops who have died in the first week of 2012 as a result of the war in Afghanistan, according to figures from the website icasualties.org, an independent database that tracks the war's casualties.

In an unrelated episode, also in southern Afghanistan, six children and an adult were killed in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province, when a bomb exploded in a trash can near where they were playing, said Matiullah Khan, a senior police official.

The bomb was in a suicide vest hidden in the trash can, he said. Four other children were in critical condition.

Additional material from The Associated Press.

Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/world/8-nato-troops-6-afghan-children-killed-2085788.html?cxtype=rss_world

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