Seven US troops, politician killed

Seven US soldiers and an election candidate have been killed in a wave of weekend attacks in Afghanistan, officials said yesterday, as President Hamid Karzai called for a rethink of Washington’s war strategy.

Two soldiers were killed yesterday in separate attacks, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Five troops were killed in other militant violence in the south and east of the country, the areas hardest hit by the Taliban-led insurgency now reaching the end of its ninth and most deadly year.

A US military spokesman said all seven soldiers were US nationals.

Mr Karzai told the visiting Norbert Lammert, President of the German Parliament, that the counter-insurgency strategy must be rethought, according to a statement from Mr Karzai’s office.

“Speaking about Afghanistan and regional security (Mr Karzai) said that the strategy of the war on terrorism must be reassessed,” the statement said.

“The experience over the past years showed that fighting (Taliban) in Afghan villages has been ineffective and is not achieving anything but killing civilians.”

International troops have suffered escalating casualties as they step up the fight against a Taliban insurgency which has become increasingly deadly since the militants were ousted from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

The number of foreign soldiers killed in the war so far this year has now reached 472, compared with 521 who died during all of 2009, according to an AFP tally based on a count by the independent www.icasualties.org website.

Civilian casualties have also risen, but insurgents were responsible for over three quarters of the 1,271 deaths and 1,997 people wounded in the first six months of this year, according to a UN report this month.

About 141,000 US and Nato troops are deployed in Afghanistan to fight the insurgency and protect Mr Karzai’s US-backed government.

The country is due to hold its second post-Taliban parliamentary elections on September 18 amid fears that insurgent attacks might disrupt the vote.

Candidate Abdul Manan, running for a seat in the western province of Herat, was shot dead on Saturday in an attack blamed on the militants.

Nato troops backed by Afghan security forces killed up to 15 insurgents in a battle in the eastern province of Paktia late on Saturday, ISAF said.