Bomb in southern Afghanistan kills 2 US service members; other fighting kills 18 militants

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Bomb kills 2 US service members in Afghanistan

KABUL — A bomb attack killed two U.S. service members in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while Afghan officials said at least 18 militants died in a recent operation in the same region.

A spokesman for U.S. forces, Col. Wayne Shanks, confirmed that the dead were Americans but declined to provide further details until family members were notified.

Thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan forces have poured into southern Afghanistan in recent months to try to rout Taliban from areas long ruled more by the militants than by the government of President Hamid Karzai.

U.S. Marines and Afghan troops mounted a massive operation in the southern town of Marjah this spring and troops are increasing pressure in the southeastern province of Kandahar — the birthplace of the former Taliban regime.

With Karzai in Washington as part of a four-day U.S. visit, President Barack Obama was holding a series of closed-door meetings on Afghanistan and was due to meet with the Afghan leader on Wednesday. He has greatly expanded the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan since taking office, but plans to start drawing down troops in July 2011. The goal that is widely viewed as dependent on successful operations this summer.

Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said Tuesday that Afghan and NATO forces killed 18 militants and arrested six a day earlier in the Sangin district of southern Helmand province.

NATO said an allied MH-60 helicopter provided close air support and suppressing fire for the Sangin operation. It said an “unknown number” of militants inside a compound were killed.

The alliance said no children or women were inside. The helicopter later made a controlled landing after being hit by enemy fire. All the crew were picked up and safely returned to base.

In Kandahar, meanwhile, insurgents attacked a house and killed a civilian who had been targeted for dealing with Afghan government officials, provincial police Chief Fazel Ahmad Sherzad said. Citing eyewitness accounts, he said the man’s relatives — including some women — returned fire and killed three Taliban.

Violence has been rising countrywide in recent months. In northern Kunduz province on Tuesday, about 50 students at a girls’ school were hospitalized after losing consciousness or vomiting in what the top local health official called a suspected poison gas attack.

Regional public health chief Azizullah Safer said the mass sickening resembled several other suspected gas attacks last week at girls’ schools in Kunduz and the Afghan capital, Kabul. Officials believe they have been carried out by militants opposed to education for girls.

Also Tuesday, four teachers and nine students were hospitalized after a bomb went off under a stairwell at a boys’ school in the Smalhail district of eastern Khost province, a student and regional health chief Amir Badsh said.

NATO said an explosive ordnance disposal team went to the school in Khost and found 25 to 30 pounds (11 to 14 kilograms) of explosive material in the stairwell. It was the second incident reported by NATO of explosives at a school.

In April, NATO said a joint Afghan and international security force captured a Taliban leader who had placed bombs at a school in the Kuhak district of Kandahar province. A search of the area uncovered detonation wires in a field across the road and nine explosive devices buried in and around the school.

Eleven militants were killed in operations in the east and south Monday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said.

NATO said the alliance killed “several insurgents” in Khost on Monday during an Afghan and allied operation involving air support deployed during a search for an operative of the Haqqani group, an Afghan Taliban group based in Pakistan.

Associated Press writers Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.