The year 2007 has proved the deadliest for the US forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. An American soldier died, on November 11, of wounds he sustained in an earlier battle with Taliban fighters, according to icasualities.org, an independent website that monitors US military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. This brought to 109 the American military toll this year.
Six soldiers were killed on November 9, in an ambush by Taliban in the biggest loss of US life in Afghanistan since February, when eight were killed in a Chinook helicopter crash. The previous deadliest year for US soldiers in Afghanistan was 2005 with 99 servicemen killed. Last year, 98 US soldiers died in the violence-racked country.
A total of 214 foreign soldiers died in Afghanistan in 2007, according to the web portal. There are approximately 54,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, about half of them American.
The year 2007 has also become the deadliest for US forces in Iraq with a total of 852 soldiers killed so far. The raging violence in the war-torn country also claimed more Afghan lives. Unknown gunmen on motorbikes shot dead six pro-government tribal elders as they were going to a prayer service in western Herat, provincial police chief Juma Khan Adil was reported as saying. He was unable to say who might have been behind the killing but similar such incidents have in the past been blamed on Taliban.
Elsewhere in the south, two policemen were killed in a late-night attack on their checkpost in Zabul province, a police official said.
A soldier was also killed and two of his colleagues wounded in a bomb blast in the eastern province of Khost on November 10. A massive suicide blast in the north on November 6 killed nearly 80 people, 59 of them children, in the worst to hit troubled Afghanistan. Taliban, which has been stepping up attacks against US-led forces in recent months, has denied involvement. Its most daring attack targeted the main US military base in February during an unannounced visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney, who escaped unscathed. The attack killed 18 people, including foreign troops.