1000 US TROOPS REPORTED KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN

Kandahar: The number of US troops killed in Afghanistan has reached 1,000, an independent website said yesterday, with deadly bombings in the south and east highlighting the struggle to stabilise the country.
Civilian and military casualties hit record highs last year as violence reached its worst levels since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001, with foreign forces launching two big offensives in the past eight months to stem a growing insurgency.

• A website which tracks casualties, www.icasualties.org, said 54 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, raising the total to 1,000 since the Taliban's fall. This compares with eight this year in Iraq, where 4,378 have been killed since 2003.
• Afghanistan is high on US President Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda and more American casualties or a military campaign that fails to bring stability to the country in an increasingly unpopular war could harm his presidency.
• The militants have made a comeback, pushing out of strongholds in the south into the east and north, and are resisting efforts by President Hamid Karzai's government to impose control.
• The second of the offensives, Operation Mushtarak, was launched by Nato-led troops 10 days ago to flush militants out of the Marjah district of Helmand, where they had set up their last big stronghold in Afghanistan's most violent province.
• Western forces say they have broken the Taliban's grip and only face pockets of resistance, some of it fierce, in Marjah.
• But violence is continuing. A bomb that killed at least seven civilians and wounded 14 near a government building in Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, underscored the vast security challenges facing Nato and Karzai's US-backed government.
• "The blast was caused by explosives attached to a bicycle and was controlled remotely," said Dawood Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand's provincial government.
• Karzai condemned three separate bombings in the past 24 hours, including a suicide attack which killed 16 people in eastern Nangahar province. Ghulam Ghamsharik, a former commander in the war against Soviet occupation troops, and a provincial refugee ministry official were among those killed.

Source: REUTERS