Suicide blast kills 16 in Kabul (3 U.S. soldiers killed)

[maddezmom]

Reuters edited headline:

KABUL (Reuters) - The deadliest suicide bombing in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban five years ago killed at least 16 people on Friday, up to seven of them foreigners, near the U.S. embassy just before noon Islamic prayers.

"Some of them turned into pieces," a policeman said as rescue crews hosed down fires and washed blood and body parts from the road meters (yards) from the entrance to the heavily fortified embassy.

Police and rescue officials say at least 16 people, including up to seven foreign soldiers or security contractors, were killed in the blast that stripped trees and shattered windows for several hundred meters in either direction days before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

U.S. and Afghan forces and private U.S. contractors quickly sealed off the scene as wailing local residents carried off their own wounded.

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060908/wl_nm/afghan_blast_dc;_

Deadly bomb blast near U-S Embassy in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan A massive explosion near the U-S Embassy in Afghanistan's capital has killed at least three people, including two soldiers in the U-S-led coalition.

Witnesses say the blast tore apart a military vehicle, scattering debris and body parts over a wide area..

The bodies of two soldiers were lying yards from the vehicle after the explosion. U-S soldiers and heavily armed American security forces have cordoned off the scene and are searching for evidence.

http://www.ktre.com/Global/story.asp?S=5380969

[JI7]

1. another sign of things going "swimmingly" in Afghanistan

[maddezmom]

8. some pics from the scene...check out the 1st one

this first pic is strange.


An Afghan policeman secures the site of a suicide car bomb blast, about 100 metres from the US embassy in Kabul. Two US soldiers and eight Afghans were killed in the blast, police said.(AFP/Farzana Wahidy)



.S soldiers stand near the wreckage of a vehicle as one checks the side of it after an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday, Sept. 8, 2006. A suicide bomber sparked a massive blast Friday near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, tearing apart a military vehicle and killing at least three people, including two U.S.-led coalition soldiers, witnesses said and police said. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

[VolcanoJen]

2. It's getting pretty shaky in Afghanistan

Didn't NATO call for reinforcements just today?

[maddezmom]

4. yes, here's the link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2498232&mesg_id=2498232

[maddezmom]

6. another link: NATO looks to answer Afghan troop call

~snip~
Despite the appeal for reinforcements and a sharp spike in deaths of British and Canadian personnel in southern Afghanistan, there were new assurances from US President George W. Bush that the Taliban would not win.

But his comments came as NATO admitted it had encountered a surprisingly strong insurgency in the country. Brigadier Ed Butler, the senior British commander, said his troops were attacked up to a dozen times daily.

~snip~

Butler added that British troops in Afghanistan were involved in "fighting that is up close and personal", including at times hand-to-hand combat.

US General James Jones earlier said he would urge members of the transatlantic military alliance to provide more soldiers at a meeting of NATO chiefs of defence staff in Warsaw on Friday and Saturday.


more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060908/wl_uk_afp/afghanistanunrestnatobritain;_

[VolcanoJen]

3. Blast by U.S. Kabul Embassy Kills 16 - Reuters

Latest report I could find; MSNBC just reported this story live, saying that an American envoy was the target of the attack.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060908/wl_nm/afghan_blast_dc_5

KABUL (Reuters) - A devastating suicide car bombing in Kabul on Friday, the worst for months, killed 16 people including seven foreigners, rescuers and police said.

The blast ripped through one of Kabul's busiest, most protected streets just outside the U.S. embassy. Al Jazeera television reported that at least three American soldiers had been killed.

The explosion occurred at a big intersection less than 100 meters (yards) from the heavily fortified embassy.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Blast by U.S. embassy in Afghanistan kills 16

Blast by U.S. embassy in Afghanistan kills 16
Al-Jazeera reports at least 3 American troops killed in huge explosion

Updated: 16 minutes ago
KABUL, Afghanistan - A devastating suicide car bombing in Kabul on Friday, the worst for months, killed 16 people including seven foreigners, rescuers and police said.

The blast ripped through one of Kabul’s busiest, most protected streets just outside the U.S. embassy. Al Jazeera television reported that at least three American soldiers had been killed.

The explosion occurred at a big intersection less than 100 yards from the heavily fortified embassy.

Taliban fighters began using suicide attacks late last year as part of a strategy to harry Western forces in Afghanistan and destabilize President Hamid Karzai’s government.
(snip/...)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14726918/

[maddezmom]

7. Kabul bombing kills 10, including 2 GIs

KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomb struck a convoy of U.S. military vehicles in Kabul on Friday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 17, police said. Two American soldiers were among the dead and two others among the wounded, the U.S. military said.

The blast, which took place near the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital, tore a military vehicle into two burning chunks and scattered debris and body parts over a 50-yard radius.

It rattled windows throughout the downtown area and sent a plume of brown smoke spiraling into the sky.

Eight Afghan civilians were killed and 15 were wounded, said Interior Ministry spokesman Yousef Stanezai. Two American soldiers were among those killed, and two were wounded, said U.S. military spokeswoman Lt. Tamara Lawrence. The attacker also died.

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060908/ap_on_re_as/afghan_bomb_blast

[eccles12]

9. "We're fighting them over there" so they can kill us over there. nt

[0007]

10. Throw two more on the big pile!

Grass Bush

Pile the bodies high in Austerlitz and Waterloo Afghanistan
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; bush; I cover all.

And pile them high in Gettyburg Kabal
And pile them high in Ypres and Vedum Mossoul and Al Fallaujah

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?

I am the grass bush.
Let me work.

Carl Sandburg


Support the war - Donate a Son a Daughter
The GOP working for a better America
God Bless America

[ninkasi]

11. If this attack and the other recent

increase in attacks by the Taliban are an example of things going "swimmingly", I'd hate to see what the hag Coulter considers going worse.

[maddezmom]

12. related link: Afghanistan deadlier for coalition troops than Iraq: study

NATO soldiers fighting in Afghanistan face a higher risk of being killed than the U.S.-led international forces that invaded Iraq in 2003, a British statistician says.

Sheila Bird, the vice-president of Britain's Royal Statistical Society, said in the Sept. 9 issue of New Scientist magazine that she made the conclusion after analyzing casualty rates and the number of soldiers deployed on each mission.

Bird said the risk to the NATO forces fighting militants in Afghanistan — including more than 2,000 Canadian troops — is approaching the level faced by the then-Soviets, who abandoned their war there in 1989 after 10 years.

Five of the approximately 18,500 soldiers in the NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have been killed every week since May, she said.

That's more than twice the level during the battles to control Iraq, Bird calculated.

more:http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/09/07/soldiers-statistics.html

[David__77]

13. Five years of occupation is too long.

People of most countries would start to widely resist at this point. The truth is that the Afghan occupation could become even worse than the Iraqi one under certain conditions.

[Imagevision]

14. The deadliest suicide bombing in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban

Commanders on the ground requesting 2000 more Nato troops to fight escalating insurgency.

[Miss Chybil]

15. My son just went back there for the third time...

I'm scared.

[maddezmom]

16. I'll be keeping you both in my thoughts

:hug:

[Miss Chybil]

19. Thank you... you think it would get easier, but it doesn't. nt

[Barrett808]

17. We wish you and him the best.

Hang in there.

[Miss Chybil]

20. Thank you. nt

[Supersedeas]

18. Bush abandoned this place to build his legacy in Iraq

[Phredicles]

21. Coulda been worse; how bad would it have been if things WEREN'T going

so swimmingly over there?