Posted on 01/20/2006 2:29:00 AM PST by Clive
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canadian troops and Afghan police averted a potentially deadly car bomb yesterday, working through the night to defuse a vehicle packed with enough explosives to cause what a military spokesman called "a catastrophe."
The small car, filled with 120-millimetre mortar shells and dozens of smaller explosives, was found abandoned on a street in Kandahar by the Afghan National Police on Wednesday afternoon.
They called the Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team, based less than 10 kilometres away, and a squad of soldiers was dispatched to clear the area along with a team of combat engineers.
Captain Francois Giroux, a spokesman for the Canadian reconstruction team, said the engineers quickly realized they had a major car bomb on their hands.
"It was a really large quantity of explosives -- it could have been quite disastrous," he said. "This would have been a very catastrophic event had this gone off or been detonated."
The Canadian bomb-disposal experts worked in shifts through the night to dismantle the bomb, a "vehicle-borne improvised explosive device" in military parlance, taking the last of the explosives out yesterday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after the car bomb was first discovered.
"It took place over many hours," Capt. Giroux said. "They went right through the night. They didn't want to rush this."
He said the engineers eventually pulled 13 of the huge mortar shells out of the car along with dozens of smaller shells, grenades and "other armaments."
The discovery of the car bomb comes only four days after Glyn Berry, a Canadian diplomat attached to the reconstruction team, was killed when a vehicle swerved into a Canadian convoy on the outskirts of Kandahar and blew up.
Three soldiers in the vehicle were severely wounded in the bombing attack, for which the Taliban claimed credit, and remain in a U.S. military hospital in Germany. Mr. Berry's body was repatriated to Britain yesterday.
Capt. Giroux said there is no indication who constructed the car bomb or whether it was to be aimed at Canadians. "That would be pure speculation."
However, he said the attack was foiled because of the success the Canadian reconstruction team has had in the six months it has been operating in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and a hotbed of enemy activity since the hard-line Islamic militia was ousted from power in 2001.
"This was a result of the great teamwork that has developed between the PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] and the local authorities," Capt. Giroux said. "We've had a lot of contact with the Afghan police and the RCMP members of the PRT ... and that obviously paid off in this instance."
Colonel Steve Noonan, commander of the Canadian contingent in southern Afghanistan, said the reconstruction team has been a big success in Kandahar, a fact that likely worries Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders.
"This PRT has been one of the best in the country, as cited by the Americans and others," he said. "We're the only one that has diplomats, aid agencies and a national police force presence all in the same team. And it's working incredibly well."
Violence has been surging in Afghanistan over the past four months, and has included 27 suicide bombings -- a tactic rarely used by Afghan militants until the past year.
This week saw three suicide bombings. The Canadian convoy was attacked on Sunday and on Monday a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed 23 people watching a wrestling match in a border town east of Kandahar, while four people died when a convoy of Afghan army troop trucks was attacked near Kandahar.
A Taliban commander told Reuters news agency this week that hundreds of his fighters are preparing to launch more suicide attacks aimed at driving out U.S. and coalition troops in the country to support the current Afghan government.
"Hundreds of Afghan Taliban mujahedeen are ready for suicide attacks," Mullah Dadullah said by satellite phone from an undisclosed location. "They only await orders from the Taliban leadership."
Dadullah said foreign troops are being cowed by the suicide attacks. "Infidels cannot do anything about suicide attacks ... [they] are cowards while we Muslims are making sacrifices for the independence of our country."
However, Col. Noonan suggested the Taliban have adopted the new tactic after failing miserably at more conventional guerrilla warfare. "Their tactics last spring and summer during their last offensive were not effective at all," he said.
"They were being defeated routinely -- they were getting killed in droves basically."
Suicide bombs and booby traps detonated from afar limit their losses while inflicting casualties on coalition troops, he said. "But in the end, they kill a lot of Afghans with these tactics as well. And killing a lot of civilians is not going to convert anyone to their cause."
The Afghan government has expressed fears the bombing attacks will frighten NATO members out of a planned expansion into southern Afghanistan, an expansion that will see more than 2,000 Canadian soldiers deploying to Kandahar next month.
Fear of attacks in the south is fuelling opposition in the Netherlands to sending its troops to join the Canadian brigade here, but Col. Noonan said his soldiers are undeterred.
"They're trying to weaken our resolve ... and it's not going to work," he said. "We're doing our part in the war on terrorism."
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A bomb, or someone wanted to create a cache.
You just can't make this stuff up.
L
Good work!
It was a car bomb.
The CBC version titled "Car bomb discovered near Canadian base in Kandahar" comtains the following:
Inside the car they saw at least four artillery shells. When Canadian troops arrived, they discovered not four shells but a dozen in the back of the car, under the seat and on the floor.All the driver had to do was flick a switch, then honk the horn to detonate the bomb.
According to a military spokesman "it was very simple, very basic design."
It was also big enough, with 125 kilograms of explosives, to kill and cause a lot of damage in a wide area.
So why did the driver leave the car, rather than flick and honk?
Perhaps he decided that he wanted to stay alive.
Great work.
Afghanistan is going to be a very tough post for these brave soldiers.
Good luck and Godspeed to them all.
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