Day: March 26, 2005

Shooting ranges are dangerous places, and those in the military are necessarily drenched in a ton of safety rules and safety briefings and cease fires for any and every little thing. Apparently, setting up a shooting range is also dangerous, if that range is to be located in a country that has seen decades-long warfare.

Four U.S. soldiers died when their vehicle struck a land mine in central Afghanistan on Saturday, the military said. It was unclear whether the mine was freshly laid or a leftover from the country’s long wars.

The soldiers were among a group of American and Afghan officials examining a potential site for a shooting range in Logar Province, 25 miles south of Kabul, when one of their three vehicles hit the mine, spokeswoman Lt. Cindy Moore said.

The bodies of the four dead, none of whom was identified, were airlifted to the main U.S. base at Bagram, Moore said. No one else was reported hurt.

A truly tragic occurence, especially in a theater of operations that receives little media attention.

Speaking of media attention, the Taliban has decided to ridiculously take credit for this mine and, in the interest of fairness, the Associated Press has given them equal time.

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the blast, but Moore said investigators suspected the mine was an old charge dislodged by recent rain and snow or that the vehicle had wandered into an unmapped minefield.

Moore said U.S. troops first toured an area near the scene of Saturday’s incident about a week earlier searching for a site for a training range for the American-trained Afghan army.

“We believe it was an old mine which could have shifted,” she said.

Gov. Mohammed Aman Hamini said the incident occurred in a desert area crisscrossed by rough tracks.

“It’s an old mine. There’s no traffic on the route they took, but the Russians used to use it because they were afraid of the main road,” Hamini told The Associated Press, referring to the Soviet troops which occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.

However, Mullah Hakim Latifi, a man who claims to speak for the Taliban, said its fighters detonated the mine by remote control.

“We’ve said again and again that we would resume our holy war in the spring,” Latifi told AP by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.

Ummm … yeah, sure. Listen, Queen Latifi, setting off a mine by remote control, with no other action or ambush activity, against soft targets in the open is either stupidity or a lie. Either way, it’s a silly way to claim the resumption of your holy war, which so far has consisted mainly of “Holy shit! Run away!”

Back to the Associated Press, let’s see how they wrap up the story.

According to Defense Department statistics, 122 American soldiers have now died since U.S.-led forces invaded to oust the former Taliban government for harboring al-Qaida militants after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Many have been killed in accidents, including by mines left behind by Soviet troops or the Afghan factions who then fought each other.

A U.S. military policeman died March 15 when his vehicle hit what appeared to be an old mine in western Afghanistan.

The worst incident occurred in January 2004, when an explosion at an arms dump in southeastern Ghazni province killed eight American soldiers.

The 17,000 American troops still in Afghanistan also face a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency. The U.S. military says its air and ground operations along the Pakistani border killed 12 people in the past week. Eight were suspected militants while four were civilians, including three children.

Quagmire! Baby-killers!