NATO troops' death toll up last month
02 August, 2012
KABUL: The death toll of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the Afghan war has slightly increased in July compared with the previous month.
A total of 46 ISAF service members have lost their lives, including four service members who died in non-battle incidents in July, according to the iCasualties, a website tracking the casualties of NATO-led troops in the war on terror in Afghanistan.
Out of 46 deaths in July, according to the website, 41 are U.S. soldiers; while fatalities of the foreign forces totaled 39 in June including 29 Americans.
The latest casualties of the foreign troops in Afghanistan were the killing of two U.S. Marines in an insurgent attack in western Afghan province of Badghis on Sunday July 29, the ISAF forces confirmed.
A Georgian soldier who got injured in southern Helmand province in a hostile fire in January this year died of his wounds in a Georgian hospital on Sunday, according to reports.
Some 130,000-strong NATO-led ISAF with nearly 90,000 of them Americans are currently stationed in Afghanistan to fight Taliban and help stabilize the war-battered nation.
The Taliban which have been waging over a decade-long insurgency since a U.S.-led invasion ousted their regime in late 2001, launched an annual spring offensive from May 3 this year against Afghan security forces and the NATO-led coalition troops across the militancy-plagued country.
The Taliban-led attacks have increased by 10 percent within the past three month compared with the first three months of the current year, a NATO spokesman confirmed earlier this month.
"In terms of enemy initiated attacks I can confirm that if you look at the last 12 weeks we had a slide increase of enemy initiated attacks of about 10 percent," Brigadier General Gunter Katz, a spokesman for the NATO-led ISAF, told reporters at a weekly press briefing on July 16.
On Saturday, two U.S. soldiers with the NATO-led ISAF were killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Wardak province.
A single deadliest attack against the coalition forces was a roadside bombing or Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast that left six American soldiers dead in Wardak province on July 8.
The IED attack occurred in Mullah Khil area of Wardak's provincial capital Maidan Shar 35 km west of Afghan capital of Kabul, according to Wardak provincial administration spokesman Shahidullah Shahid.
Separately, two NATO service members were injured when a military helicopter went down in western Afghanistan on July 18; no more details have been released by the coalition.
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