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U.S., U.K. Troops Killed in Afghanistan

10 June 2010 00:45 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Four American soldiers were killed when insurgents shot down a helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand province Wednesday, and a British soldier died in a separate explosion in the same province, the coalition said, APA reports quoting â€œThe Wall Street Journalâ€.
The casualties Wednesday follow a spate of attacks that could make June the deadliest month yet for North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.
NATO has lost 29 troops in the first nine days of this month, including 10 who were killed June 7 in attacks involving small arms and improvised bombs, and a vehicular accident.
So far the worst month for NATO casualties was August of last year, when 77 coalition troops were killed.
The Taliban, who lack sophisticated surface-to-air missiles, are rarely able to shoot down NATO helicopters.
Yet, amid signs that the insurgency is intensifying, they’ve been able to hit three NATO choppers in Helmand alone over the past month.
Because of deteriorating security, NATO relies more and more on helicopters to ferry troops and supplies around the country, even for short distances.
The helicopter shot down Wednesday was hit by an RPG as it flew low over the Sangin district, a spokesman for the Helmand government said, suggesting that the crash was the result of a lucky shot.
NATO declined to give details on the incident until relatives of the dead are notified. A Taliban spokesman said the helicopter, shot down by an RPG as it flew past a Taliban outpost, crashed and burned.
"The crash site was swarmed by locals in the space of a few minutes and they saw American soldiers burning to death," said the Taliban spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi.
A different insurgent RPG hit an ISAF chopper landing elsewhere in Helmand on May 21, causing no injuries.
On May 10, small arms fire downed an MH-60 ISAF helicopter in Sangin. There were no casualties but the aircraft had to be destroyed in order to keep insurgents from recovering it.
On Wednesday militants in neighboring Pakistan also attacked dozens of trucks bearing supplies to coalition troops inside Afghanistan.
Militants and highway robbers have often attacked such supply convoys over the past two years, but the attack Wednesday was only six miles from the normally well-protected Pakistani capital of Islamabad.