15 dead in Helmand violence

Published on Thursday 6 August 2009 22:03

ROADSIDE explosions and a US air strike killed at least 15 people across southern Afghanistan, including members of a family on their way to a wedding, officials said yesterday – part of worsening violence in the final weeks of campaigning before the presidential election.

The family was travelling in a tractor with a trailer through the Garmser district on Wednesday morning when they hit a mine laid in the road, Helmand province police chief Assadullah Sherzad said.

Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand, said the driver of the tractor was killed along with his wife, two children and another woman. Two other women were injured, Mr Ahmadi said.

Afghan officials also said a roadside bomb killed five police officers and wounded three in Helmand yesterday.

A police chief in a neighbouring province said a western air strike on Wednesday night killed five farmers who were loading cucumbers into a taxi.

A US spokeswoman said the men were militants putting weapons into a van.

Casualties among Afghans and international troops are climbing sharply as Western forces push into Taleban territory ahead of the presidential elections on 20 August.

More than 1,000 civilians were killed between January and June – against 818 in the same period last year, according to UN data. At least 71 international troops were killed in July, the worst monthly toll for foreign forces since the war started.

The United States and Nato have said protecting civilians is their highest priority.

Thousands of US marines and British troops last month simultaneously launched the war's two biggest operations in separate parts of Helmand province to seize territory from Taleban fighters ahead of the election.

The ongoing operations are meant to expand the government's control of the volatile south ahead of the election, part of US president Barack Obama's new strategy to defeat militants, which has seen him send tens of thousands of extra troops.

Homemade bombs are by far the insurgents' deadliest weapon, and they have also mounted suicide strikes on provincial government buildings in recent months throughout the south and east. On Tuesday they struck the capital Kabul with rockets.

Some 4,000 US marines moved last month into the district where the family was killed to secure roads and population centres ahead of the vote.

The insurgents have pledged to disrupt the election and have dramatically increased their use of roadside bombs against foreign and Afghan forces.

A US Apache helicopter opened fire on Wednesday night in neighbouring Kandahar province when it spotted men it believed were loading weapons into a van, said Lieutenant Commander Christine Sidenstricker, a spokeswoman for the US.

District police chief Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi said the five were farmers trying to move cucumbers from the rural Zhari district to the city of Kandahar. It is common for Afghan farmers to work at night in summer.

"Our information is that they were loading munitions not cucumbers," said Lt Cmdr Sidenstricker.