Word: kunduz
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...details of a deadly coalition airstrike near the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan are yet vague. However, the attack has potentially deep military consequences as well as political ramifications far away - in Germany. NATO said in a statement that Friday's airstrike targeted militants who had stolen two fuel tankers the day before. It said that most of those killed were Taliban. But Afghan authorities are saying that civilians who had flocked to collect free fuel at the behest of insurgents died among them - with an overall death toll estimated as high as 70. If true, it would...
Since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, Kunduz province and the region around it had stayed relatively quiet. A German Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) based just outside the eponymous provincial capital coordinated development efforts, building roads and bridges to upgrade infrastructure shattered by the war. The nature of their mission was reflected in rules of engagement: German troops were prohibited from shooting first. (See pictures from a battle in Afghanistan's Kunar province...
...permitted to initiate the fight, German forces in July launched their biggest operation since World War II to clear Chahar Dara district, a Pashtun insurgent stronghold west of Kunduz city where hundreds of fighters travel openly in pickup trucks and demand money and food villagers. But, says local resident Abdul Matin, 28, the militants simply filtered back into the area when the Germans returned to base and police are nowhere in sight. The insurgent efforts accelerated ahead of the Aug. 20 presidential elections, which the Taliban had vowed to disrupt. President Hamid Karzai's running mate, Mohammad Qasim Fahim...
Lieut. Col. Carsten Spiering, spokesman for Germany's Kunduz PRT, counters that avoiding harm to civilians is a mission priority, even if it means letting the Taliban slip away from time to time. "We take extra care and would rather save the fight for another day than risk killing one innocent person," he says. "That's not how we operate here." (Another German officer, who asked not to be named, insisted the damage done by past U.S. airstrikes has made "everyone's job more difficult...
...troops to peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts, has found itself drawn into a bloody conflict. In the most recent reminder of how dangerous the mission has become, a memorial service was held in the central town of Bad Salzungen on Thursday for three young soldiers killed in an attack near Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, on June 23. They were the latest casualties of a war that has claimed the lives of 35 German soldiers. At the memorial, senior Cabinet ministers went on the defensive, pledging that German soldiers would stay in Afghanistan. "We're in Afghanistan because we have to protect...