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Swedish soldier dies after Afghan bomb attack
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-26 09:37
A Swedish soldier with the NATO-led mission in northern Afghanistan died
after a bomb attack on Friday, the first Swedish peacekeeper to be killed in the
country.
The Swedish Defense Ministry said the man was one of four wounded when a
remote-controlled bomb struck one vehicle in a convoy of five driving back from
a sports event on the outskirts of the city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
A mine planted during the sports event caused the blast, an Afghan police
spokesman said.
"It is with deep sorrow that I have to announce that a Swedish soldier has
fallen in the line of duty while on foreign service," the commander of the
Swedish armed forces, Hakan Syren, said in a statement on Saturday.
"My thoughts and those of the Defense Forces go out now to the soldier's
relatives," he added.
Three ISAF soldiers have been killed in separate incidents during the past
month, including a suicide attack in Kabul. One British peacekeeper was killed
and several ISAF soldiers hurt when gunmen fired on their vehicle inside Mazar
city last month.
About 9,000 ISAF soldiers are in Afghanistan, charged with keeping the peace
after U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban government in 2001. A separate
U.S.-led force of about 20,000 is hunting the Taliban and their Islamist allies,
such as al Qaeda.
The Swedish soldier died in a hospital in Kabul. One of the other wounded
troops remained in a serious condition, the army said. The two other soldiers,
one of whose injuries was light, were being treated in a hospital in Termez in
Uzbekistan.
It said the Afghan police had detained six people in connection with the
explosion.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack but suspicion fell on
Taliban guerrillas.
Taliban attacks on ISAF troops, stationed mostly in the capital and
relatively secure parts of north and western Afghanistan, have been rare
compared to those targeting U.S.-led troops in the restive south and east.
Friday's incident comes amid rising attacks in southern and eastern
Afghanistan where the militants are most active.
More than 1,100 people have been killed in militant-related violence in
Afghanistan this year. Most were militants but the dead include nearly 60 U.S.
soldiers.
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