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Unknown Forces Fire Mortars Near Coalition Troops in Afghanistan
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, April 23 (News Agencies) - Unknown forces fired mortar rounds near coalition troops in Afghanistan during operations to allegedly root out Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters, a U.S. army spokesman said Tuesday, news agencies reported.
Major Bryan Hilferty also told reporters that more weapons caches were discovered and three people had been detained for unspecified reasons, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
He said the mortar attack occurred Monday, April 22, in Gardez, the capital of eastern Paktia province where U.S.-led forces raided a fortified Taliban and Al-Qaeda mountain stronghold in March.
"In the Gardez area yesterday morning, three mortars impacted several hundred meters from coalition forces," he said, without elaborating.
He also said coalition forces had discovered “several rockets and ammunition caches and hundreds of rounds in central Afghanistan.”
"We also detained three individuals in different portions of the country." Hilferty did not identify the individuals or say why they had been detained.
Meanwhile, six Afghan children were airlifted for treatment by coalition forces after suffering serious landmine injuries near Kandahar, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said Tuesday, April 23.
The youngsters, aged between eight and 15, were airlifted to Kabul Monday along with two adults who were also injured in the incident earlier in the morning.
They were flown from the southern city of Kandahar in coalition aircraft before being driven by ISAF ambulances to German and Italian military hospitals for treatment, according to Squadron Leader Tom Rounds.
He told reporters that two other adults suffered minor injuries but were treated on site. "The remaining eight were treated for trauma and eventually evacuated by air," said Rounds.
"There were six children among the eight. Three of those were listed as very seriously ill and three as seriously ill,” he added. "The children ... all suffered an assortment of shrapnel injuries to the head, legs and abdomen."
Afghanistan is littered with mines and unexploded ordnance after 23 years of war. Four American servicemen were killed last week as they tried to destroy unexploded ordnance in Kandahar.
In another development, torrential rains in western Afghanistan forced the United Nations refugee agency Tuesday to suspend a repatriation campaign for hundreds of people returning to their homes, a spokesman said.
Some 250 refugees were stuck in a transit center in Qala Nau, provincial capital of Badghis province, after the town became cut off from the east and west, said Yusuf Hassan of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
"Torrential rains and flash floods have cut off the town," he told AFP.
"The rains started yesterday and it is still drizzling. We have 250 refugees who are supposed to leave Qala Nau who are now in a transit center. Up to four trucks of returnees are now stranded."
Hassan said emergency trucks were being mobilized to the town to provide relief supplies for the refugees.
"The greatest need is for food and blankets... In Qala Nau there have been two NGO [non-government organization] meetings to respond to the crisis. They are mobilizing whatever is necessary," said Hassan.
Refugees on one truck had lost all their possessions after their vehicle toppled over, although no one suffered major injury.
Most of the refugees are thought to have been returning from exile in Iran although some had been based at a center for internally displaced people in the western province of Herat.
Some 11,400 refugees have returned from Iran over the past few weeks, according to the UNHCR, just a fraction of the number that fled to Afghanistan's western neighbor in the last two decades of war and drought.
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