Sad news broke out of Afghanistan today: Three more Canadian soldiers died.
What makes this different is that the deaths didn't occur as a result of a roadside bombing. Instead, the Taliban attacked the soldiers' LAV-III armoured personnel carrier directly.
Military officials are still investigating how Corporal Andrew Grenon, 23, Cpl. Mike Seggie, 21, and Private Chad Horn, 21, were killed Wednesday as they patrolled west of Kandahar city. But they have concluded the soldiers – who were weeks or just days from heading home – weren't victims of the kind of planted bomb that has inflicted the heaviest toll on Canada's troops.
Instead, the Taliban appear to have mounted a “direct-fire attack,” which could include shots from Kalashnikov rifles, grenade launchers, or even powerful 82 mm recoilless rifles, capable of punching through armoured vehicles.
The Taliban rarely succeed in inflicting casualties in direct confrontations with Canadians. The last major incident happened exactly two years ago, on Sept. 3, 2006, in a battle that killed four soldiers at the beginning of Operation Medusa, the largest offensive by Canadian troops in half a century. That battle took place only a few kilometres from the latest deaths in Zhari district, a measure of how the Canadians have struggled to hold territory. ...
Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, described the latest casualties as particularly troubling.
“This attack is worrisome in the kind of sophistication of that attack,” he said. ...
The number of Taliban ambushes have increased by more than 50 per cent this year, compared with the same period last year, according to statistics kept by Vigilant Strategic Services Afghanistan. That's outpacing the growth of successful bombings.
The death rate among foreign troops in Afghanistan has also increased, rising 30 per cent from last year and surpassing the casualties in Iraq this summer. Canadian casualties have not followed the same trend, but the numbers have stayed consistently high, with 22 Canadian soldiers killed in 2008 compared with 26 during the same period in 2007, and 23 in 2006. The latest deaths brings to 96 the total number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
Speaking on CBC TV's The National tonight, senior correspondent Brian Stewart said this latest incident shows a trend of the past six to seven weeks of the Taliban going directly after NATO's best troops. For example, the ambush that killed 10 French soldiers.
The Taliban coming over from Pakistan are better trained, better armed, better led and more dangerous than before, he said.
See this post for more context.