AI
Sunday, July 23, 2006 12:41:08 AM
Two Canadians killed in Afghanistan, 8 wounded
Corporal Jason Patrick Warren, left, and Corporal Francisco Gomez died in the attacks.
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
Globe and Mail Update
POSTED AT 5:11 PM EDT ON 22/07/06
Kandahar, Afghanistan — Two Canadian soldiers were killed and eight others wounded early this evening here in a double-barreled suicide bombing which also killed at least three and perhaps as many as seven Afghan civilians and injured numerous others.
The dead Canadians are 44-year-old Corporal Francisco Gomez of the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, whose home unit is Lord Strathcona's Horse of Edmonton, and Corporal Jason Patrick Warren, 29, of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) based in Montreal.
The 18th and 19th soldiers killed on duty in Afghanistan since 2002, they were part of the tail end of an enormous convoy returning to the main air base here after two weeks of intensive combat operations in southern part of the country.
All the wounded Canadians, who were not identified, are in good condition with non-life-threatening injuries. Five were released from hospital at Kandahar Air Field tonight, with two held for observation and only one flown to the U.S. military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany, for further treatment unavailable here.
Such large convoys move along the roads near and in Kandahar City in smaller "packets" of vehicles, so as not to completely paralyze the narrow, congested and always dangerous city streets.
According to Colonel Tom Putt, deputy commanding officer of the Canadian Task Force Afghanistan, the first blast — a suicide car bomber who drove into a Bison armoured vehicle — was followed an hour later by a second, this one a bomber moving on foot who blew himself up in a crowd of Afghans just a little further along on Highway 1 six kilometers west of this nation's second-largest city.
All the Canadians were injured in the first blast, with the devastation of the second borne by locals who had simply gathered, as do curious onlookers the world over at times of tragedy, by the side of the highway as the convoy began moving through the area.
Two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters had only recently cleared the area, ferrying the Canadian wounded to the base, when the walking bomber exploded his device and sent as many as a dozen Afghan ambulances rushing to the scene. Most of the civilians were seriously injured, according to local reporters, with the lone Kandahar hospital, Mirwais, overwhelmed with casualties.
Contrary to local reports, Col. Putt said the Canadians had not fired a single shot but rather conducted "a textbook" after-attack operation.
The attacks — the largest number of casualties inflicted in a single day by insurgents since Canada first sent troops to this country four years ago and the first double-ended one — left Canadians at the main coalition base reeling.
Most of the Canadian battle group had just returned untouched and unbowed from two weeks of almost daily fighting with the Taliban throughout British-controlled Helmand Province and Kandahar Province.
All the soldiers are but two or three weeks away from the end of their six-month tour here.
Cruelly, unknown to those quietly savoring what they believed was a safe and triumphant return, about 20 kilometers away from the base, at virtually the same time, the first suicider was slamming his vehicle into the Bison, with Cpl. Gomez at the wheel.
Col. Putt said doctors at the base hospital report that the body armor and ballistic glasses worn by the wounded were dented and scratched and that this protective equipment spared them more grievous injuries.
The soldiers of Alpha Company, 1PPCLI, were the last to come back to base from a mission which changed on the fly and at its peak involved two thirds, or about 600, of the 800-member combat group.
Several times, the group with its formidable Light Armored Vehicles, or LAVs, was slated to return to base, but each time, they were diverted to other tasks, often in support of beleaguered British troops.
A Company alone, soldiers said, had what the military calls 35 TICs — or Troops in Contact with the enemy — in 12 days in the field. Charlie Company, which returned to base two days earlier after two weeks beyond the wire that rings the big base, had two major firefights and too many Rocket-Propelled Grenade and small-arms attacks to count.
"It's like we had a force field protecting us," one jubilant soldier told reporters as A Company arrived without having taken a single casualty despite protracted fighting.
But the bubble of relief and exhilaration burst soon after the convoy began pulling into the vehicle compound on the sprawling dusty base, though none of the exhausted, happy soldiers realized it yet.
It was about an hour later, as the soldiers headed off to the showers, that with dusk approaching word began to spread and tearful soldiers who had just traveled safely over the same stretch of road, notorious for Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, learned their that some of their comrades were not so lucky.
There is an IED strike of one sort or another — and bombs have been hidden in food carts, donkeys, on bicycles and motorcycles — almost every day or day and a half in southern Afghanistan.
Last month, Coalition explosives' expert British Major Jim Blackburn said in a recent briefing, there were 40 IEDs in what the military calls "RC South", the four southernmost Afghanistan provinces.
What they have in common, he said bluntly, is "murderous intent".
And while bombers wearing suicide vests are not a phenomenon native to this country, there were seven times as many, or 35 attacks, last year as in the first four years of Coalition operations since the U.S. invasion in late 2001.
Most are believed to have been carried out by foreign fighters coming into Afghanistan from across the border with Pakistan.
As medical staff rushed to the small but sophisticated Canadian-led combat hospital and helicopters began arriving with casualties, a tangible pall replaced the earlier mood of excitement.
Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Hope, the commanding officer of the battle group, and Brigadier-General Dave Fraser, the Canadian head of Coalition forces in the volatile southern region, arrived grim-faced at the base hospital where a vehicle lot sign reads, with a particular Canadian touch, "Parking in designated areas only — eh".
Not two hours before he was at the hospital, Lt.-Col. Hope, whose vehicle was one of the last to arrive safely, had greeted reporters with a cheerful, "I guess it's good to be back", meaning that while he and his soldiers had endured weeks of attacks, hard rations and sleeping rough, that was after all their element and they had done their risky work without so much as a scratch.
Always trim, the CO is now thin, brown from long days spent under the hot Afghan sun and was clearly buoyant.
At the little hospital not much later, it was as though someone had let the air out of his compact frame. His shoulders sagged, and at one point, he appeared to be brushing tears from his face.
A ramp ceremony for Cpls. Gomez and Warren may be held as early as Monday morning.
cblatchford@globeandmail.ca
© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060722.w2afghansolde0722/BNStory/Afghanistan/ho... [extensive comments at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060722.w2afghansolde0722/CommentStory/Afghanist... ]
Corporal Jason Patrick Warren, left, and Corporal Francisco Gomez died in the attacks.
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
Globe and Mail Update
POSTED AT 5:11 PM EDT ON 22/07/06
Kandahar, Afghanistan — Two Canadian soldiers were killed and eight others wounded early this evening here in a double-barreled suicide bombing which also killed at least three and perhaps as many as seven Afghan civilians and injured numerous others.
The dead Canadians are 44-year-old Corporal Francisco Gomez of the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, whose home unit is Lord Strathcona's Horse of Edmonton, and Corporal Jason Patrick Warren, 29, of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) based in Montreal.
The 18th and 19th soldiers killed on duty in Afghanistan since 2002, they were part of the tail end of an enormous convoy returning to the main air base here after two weeks of intensive combat operations in southern part of the country.
All the wounded Canadians, who were not identified, are in good condition with non-life-threatening injuries. Five were released from hospital at Kandahar Air Field tonight, with two held for observation and only one flown to the U.S. military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany, for further treatment unavailable here.
Such large convoys move along the roads near and in Kandahar City in smaller "packets" of vehicles, so as not to completely paralyze the narrow, congested and always dangerous city streets.
According to Colonel Tom Putt, deputy commanding officer of the Canadian Task Force Afghanistan, the first blast — a suicide car bomber who drove into a Bison armoured vehicle — was followed an hour later by a second, this one a bomber moving on foot who blew himself up in a crowd of Afghans just a little further along on Highway 1 six kilometers west of this nation's second-largest city.
All the Canadians were injured in the first blast, with the devastation of the second borne by locals who had simply gathered, as do curious onlookers the world over at times of tragedy, by the side of the highway as the convoy began moving through the area.
Two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters had only recently cleared the area, ferrying the Canadian wounded to the base, when the walking bomber exploded his device and sent as many as a dozen Afghan ambulances rushing to the scene. Most of the civilians were seriously injured, according to local reporters, with the lone Kandahar hospital, Mirwais, overwhelmed with casualties.
Contrary to local reports, Col. Putt said the Canadians had not fired a single shot but rather conducted "a textbook" after-attack operation.
The attacks — the largest number of casualties inflicted in a single day by insurgents since Canada first sent troops to this country four years ago and the first double-ended one — left Canadians at the main coalition base reeling.
Most of the Canadian battle group had just returned untouched and unbowed from two weeks of almost daily fighting with the Taliban throughout British-controlled Helmand Province and Kandahar Province.
All the soldiers are but two or three weeks away from the end of their six-month tour here.
Cruelly, unknown to those quietly savoring what they believed was a safe and triumphant return, about 20 kilometers away from the base, at virtually the same time, the first suicider was slamming his vehicle into the Bison, with Cpl. Gomez at the wheel.
Col. Putt said doctors at the base hospital report that the body armor and ballistic glasses worn by the wounded were dented and scratched and that this protective equipment spared them more grievous injuries.
The soldiers of Alpha Company, 1PPCLI, were the last to come back to base from a mission which changed on the fly and at its peak involved two thirds, or about 600, of the 800-member combat group.
Several times, the group with its formidable Light Armored Vehicles, or LAVs, was slated to return to base, but each time, they were diverted to other tasks, often in support of beleaguered British troops.
A Company alone, soldiers said, had what the military calls 35 TICs — or Troops in Contact with the enemy — in 12 days in the field. Charlie Company, which returned to base two days earlier after two weeks beyond the wire that rings the big base, had two major firefights and too many Rocket-Propelled Grenade and small-arms attacks to count.
"It's like we had a force field protecting us," one jubilant soldier told reporters as A Company arrived without having taken a single casualty despite protracted fighting.
But the bubble of relief and exhilaration burst soon after the convoy began pulling into the vehicle compound on the sprawling dusty base, though none of the exhausted, happy soldiers realized it yet.
It was about an hour later, as the soldiers headed off to the showers, that with dusk approaching word began to spread and tearful soldiers who had just traveled safely over the same stretch of road, notorious for Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, learned their that some of their comrades were not so lucky.
There is an IED strike of one sort or another — and bombs have been hidden in food carts, donkeys, on bicycles and motorcycles — almost every day or day and a half in southern Afghanistan.
Last month, Coalition explosives' expert British Major Jim Blackburn said in a recent briefing, there were 40 IEDs in what the military calls "RC South", the four southernmost Afghanistan provinces.
What they have in common, he said bluntly, is "murderous intent".
And while bombers wearing suicide vests are not a phenomenon native to this country, there were seven times as many, or 35 attacks, last year as in the first four years of Coalition operations since the U.S. invasion in late 2001.
Most are believed to have been carried out by foreign fighters coming into Afghanistan from across the border with Pakistan.
As medical staff rushed to the small but sophisticated Canadian-led combat hospital and helicopters began arriving with casualties, a tangible pall replaced the earlier mood of excitement.
Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Hope, the commanding officer of the battle group, and Brigadier-General Dave Fraser, the Canadian head of Coalition forces in the volatile southern region, arrived grim-faced at the base hospital where a vehicle lot sign reads, with a particular Canadian touch, "Parking in designated areas only — eh".
Not two hours before he was at the hospital, Lt.-Col. Hope, whose vehicle was one of the last to arrive safely, had greeted reporters with a cheerful, "I guess it's good to be back", meaning that while he and his soldiers had endured weeks of attacks, hard rations and sleeping rough, that was after all their element and they had done their risky work without so much as a scratch.
Always trim, the CO is now thin, brown from long days spent under the hot Afghan sun and was clearly buoyant.
At the little hospital not much later, it was as though someone had let the air out of his compact frame. His shoulders sagged, and at one point, he appeared to be brushing tears from his face.
A ramp ceremony for Cpls. Gomez and Warren may be held as early as Monday morning.
cblatchford@globeandmail.ca
© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060722.w2afghansolde0722/BNStory/Afghanistan/ho... [extensive comments at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060722.w2afghansolde0722/CommentStory/Afghanist... ]
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upon the Right of Election, 1790
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