* France to guard Kabul’s military hospital, airport until 2014
July 8, 2012
KABUL: Six NATO soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, after an insurgent attack in the south killed one foreign soldier, coalition statements said.
The deaths take the number of NATO troops killed in the last two days to eight, one of the deadliest periods of violence for foreign troops in weeks.
A string of roadside bombs and clashes in the south killed at least 24 Afghan civilians and police earlier on Sunday.
The violence comes as major donors in Tokyo pledged $16 billion in development aid for Afghanistan over the next four years as they seek to prevent it from sliding back into chaos once most foreign troops leave by the end of 2014.
Two policemen were killed by a bomb in southern Helmand province, which borders Kandahar to its west where clashes with militants killed another four officers, its media office said.
Roadside bombs are by far the deadliest weapon deployed by Taliban insurgents in the war against NATO and the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Civilians bear the brunt of the violence. Despite the UN reporting a 20 percent decrease in civilian deaths in the first four months of this year compared to the same period in 2011, last year saw the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan rise for a fifth straight year to over 3,000.
NATO says the vast majority of these deaths are caused by insurgents, and not by the coalition. The French military announced that it would guard Kabul’s military hospital and the city’s international airport until 2014, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Sunday.
France is the fifth largest contributor to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is due to pull out the vast majority of its 130,000 troops by the end of 2014.
On Wednesday, French troops handed over the key Afghan province of Kapisa to local forces, completing an important stage in the accelerated withdrawal from the war-torn country.
Kapisa was the last area of Afghanistan under the control of French soldiers, the bulk of whom are due to leave by the end of 2012, two years earlier than the main NATO deadline.
"From today (Tuesday), our three Mirage 2000D jets still based in Kandahar will rejoin their base in Nancy", in northeastern France, the defence minister told French newspaper Le Parisien. "And on August 1, 650 of our 3,400 men currently on the ground will have left Afghanistan," he said.
"We will be responsible for the military hospital in Kabul and continue training programmes", until 2014, he said.
"And from October 1, we will take responsibility for Kabul international airport" over the same period. Before his election in May, French President Francois Hollande promised to speed up France’s withdrawal from Afghanistan so it would be completed by the end of 2012.
Source
|
