Radio Canada's Patrice Roy tells his fellow reporters in Kandahar what happened when the LAV-III in which he was riding got hit by a roadside bomb on Wednesday. Two Canadian soldiers died plus an Afghan interpreter. R-C cameraman Charles Dubois was injured, as was another Canadian soldier.
Patrice Roy, the well-known Ottawa bureau chief for the CBC's French-language network, told reporters how he was sitting in the third seat of the light armoured personnel carrier when a huge blast pushed him forward and tore the vehicle apart, killing the medic seated in front of him.
A second soldier and the interpreter were also killed, while Roy said another soldier suffered a head wound. Roy's colleague, Charles Dubois, suffered a serious leg injury.
"We were at the end of a very difficult mission," Roy said in the first eyewitness account to emerge a day after the blast.
"They told us, 'The Taliban won't shoot because we're so many tanks. It's a demonstration of force, so they will run,'" he said, often sighing and casting his eyes downward during the interview.
"They didn't run." ...
"I was writing my stand-up just seconds before the blast," Roy said. "It was a huge blast. It's a little bit difficult to describe."
Dubois is apparently the first Canadian journalist injured in Afghanistan. Roy is going to leave Afghanistan and stick with Dubois, who is currently being treated in Germany.
Here's some stuff from the CP story on CTV.ca:
Roy says his family had questioned his decision to go to the war-torn country, where 69 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed since 2002.
"It's difficult because, for them, it was the part of my mission that they underlined before the departure -- `Why are you going there? It's too dangerous,''' Roy said.
Shortly after the explosion Roy tried to reach his wife in Canada to let her know he was OK.
Recalling his unkept promises to his family that he would be safe and that he would not go to the front lines, Roy said he "felt terribly bad.''
"I was worried for my children not to see the news this morning in Canada,'' he said.