WASHINGTON — Insurgent use of roadside bombs in Afghanistan has surged 80 percent this year, remaining the No. l killer of foreign troops, a NATO official said Thursday.
The increase since the same period last year includes bombs that detonated or were found by troops before they could explode, said Canadian Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.
“This is very serious business for us,” Blanchette told AP Broadcast in an interview from Kabul.
Roadside bombs have been the primary killer in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Last year, improvised devices and other roadside explosives killed 172 U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. At least 31 American soldiers have been killed by roadside bombs this year, according to the Defense Department.
An American soldier was killed Thursday when a roadside bomb hit a U.S. military vehicle in eastern Afghanistan.
NATO reports that roadside bombs have caused 60 percent of the deaths in Afghanistan and severely wounded thousands of troops. The military does not release specific incident numbers, saying the data is classified.
Also Thursday, Taliban militants detonated a bomb and opened fire on a vehicle carrying U.S. soldiers, killing three of them. The ambush took place not far from the main U.S. base in Bagram, just north of the capital Kabul. It was the third strike by insurgents in the region in less than a week, part of a surge in violence eight years after the U.S invaded to oust the Taliban regime.
