Five Nato troops, Afghan official die as attacks rise

KABUL: Five Nato troops including one American died Tuesday, continuing a grim trend that could make June among the deadliest months of the nearly 9-year-old Afghan war.

Five Afghan policemen and a district governor were also killed Tuesday in separate fighting across the country, which has seen an uptick in attacks by insurgents in response to increased offensives by the international coalition.
US officials insisted the Afghan campaign is on track, although they concede that pacifying the insurgent-riddled south will take longer than expected.
Three of the Nato deaths were British, two killed in separate gunfights in southern Helmand province and a third who died in a British hospital from injuries suffered in a firefight Sunday in Helmand, according to the British government.
The American service member was killed in a gunbattle in eastern Afghanistan, US officials said, and a Polish soldier died in a rocket attack on a base in the eastern province of Ghazni, the Polish military said.
That brought the death toll for the month among the international forces to 44, including 27 Americans.
The Nato-led force suffered a record 75 deaths in July 2009 as US and British troops launched major operations in the Taliban’s southern strongholds.
The deadliest month for US troops was last October when 59 Americans died, including seven soldiers killed in a single clash near Kandahar and seven who died in a helicopter crash in northwest Afghanistan not caused by hostile fire.

WASHINGTON: The Afghan Taliban are denying a report that it receives funding, training and protection from Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency, a US monitoring group said Tuesday.
A message viewed by the US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors communications linked to international terrorism, said the Afghan Taliban described the reported link this week as “void of all truth, false and untrue propaganda.”
The comment came in reaction to a report for the London School of Economics (LSE) based on interviews with nine Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan between February and May of this year.
That report claimed the relationship between the ISI and the militants goes far beyond current estimates and that the Pakistani intelligence agency “orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the movement.”
But the Afghan Taliban, according to SITE, said that “no sound mind” would accept that Pakistan, which supports the United States, would back the jihad against the US presence in Afghanistan.
The message from the self-proclaimed Shura leadership in Afghanistan also alleged the report was concocted by the London School of Economics to “protect” American and British interests in the country.

Source: Agencies