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Afghan, NATO troops seize 24 tonnes of bomb material

01 November 2010 17:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Afghan and foreign troops have seized nearly 24 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a key ingredient in homemade bombs used by insurgents against government and international forces, the NATO-led force said on Monday, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
While the discovery of caches of materials used to make bombs is not unusual, this was the largest such find since the chemical was banned earlier this year. In August, Afghan police uncovered 17 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.
Homemade roadside bombs are among the most effective weapons used by the Taliban and other insurgents.
According to iCasualties.org, an independent website that monitors foreign troop casualties, roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices, have accounted for about 60 percent of fatalities among foreign troops over the past three years.
The total number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001 stands at 2,180. This year has been by far the deadliest with 620 deaths, more than half of those as a result of homemade bomb attacks.
The cache was uncovered in a bomb factory by Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops as they cleared a bazaar used by insurgents as a logistics hub in southern Helmand province at the weekend, ISAF said.
More than 15 insurgents were killed during gun battles that lasted throughout Saturday night and into Sunday in the town of Khan Neshin in Helmand’s Reg district.
Along with the ammonium nitrate, which would have been enough to make up to 2,000 bombs, ISAF said, troops also discovered 40 kg of opium and 2,000 kg of precursor chemicals used to process opium into heroin.
Afghanistan produces around 90 percent of the world’s opium, around two-thirds of which comes from Helmand alone. The caches were all destroyed on site, ISAF said.
President Hamid Karzai’s government banned the use, production, storage or sale of ammonium nitrate -- commonly used as fertilizer -- early this year.
The use of ammonium nitrate in roadside bombs has spread as a resurgent Taliban moved out of the strongholds in the south and east in recent years, especially into the once-calm north where pockets of resistance have sprung up.
Finding and clearing such bombs is one of the most painstaking and time-consuming tasks for foreign and Afghan troops, with bombs often cleverly hidden on dirt tracks, dry river beds or even under tarmac roads.
Civilians are also often victims of such bombs.
A mid-year U.N. report said civilian casualties had risen 31 percent in the first six months of this year compared with same period last year, including 1,271 killed. Of those, the Taliban and other insurgents were blamed for 76 percent of casualties.