39th and 40th Canadians die in A'Stan.

[anglo-saxon]

The latest Cdn troops to die in A'Stan are from the Royal Canadina Regt.

This story from the Globe and Mail, via the Dept of National Defence web site...

JANE ARMSTRONG - KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - Two Canadian soldiers were killed and five others injured in a fierce mortar ambush in Afghanistan's turbulent Panjwai region, an area where Canadian commanders have boasted of decisive victories over Taliban insurgents.

The besieged troops were providing surveillance for a road-building crew not far from where Private Josh Klukie was killed last week in a mine explosion. It is the same region where Canadian soldiers led a massive assault a month ago, killing -- according to a NATO claim -- more than 1,000 Taliban and routing others.

Military officials declared that operation a huge success, estimating that they may have destroyed as much as a third of the insurgency's hard-core ranks.

Yet the death toll of Canadians in southern Afghanistan continues to climb. In September alone, 10 soldiers were killed, the bloodiest month yet for Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Now October is off to an ominous start.

Killed in yesterday's twilight attack were Corporal Robert Thomas James Mitchell and Sergeant Craig Paul Gillam, both of the Royal Canadian Regiment based in Petawawa, Ont.

The fatal ambush was one of three separate attacks on Canadian troops over a five-hour period.

Just after noon, members of the Royal Canadian Regiment's Charles Company came under fire as they walked along the parched Arghandab River bed, about 10 kilometres from the scene of the subsequent fatal attack. There were no Canadian injuries reported.

A local witness said the Canadian troops returned fire, sending the assailants into retreat. A few minutes later, an aircraft bombed the ambush scene.

"We fought on two fronts today," said a young Taliban fighter in Panjwai District, where most of Canada's battle groups are now deployed. "But we escaped from the area, to avoid the bombings.

This will be our method now," he said from his mobile phone.

Earlier, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed a convoy of Canadian supply vehicles returning to the Kandahar Airfield from an operating base west of Kandahar city. The explosion ignited the diesel-fuelled jeep, wounding three Afghan civilians, including an 11-year-old boy.

The soldiers inside the jeep, also known as a G-Wagon, escaped without injury.

The suicide blast sent glass fragments flying into Mohammed Salim's storefront, cutting his head and leaving his shirt stained with blood.

The explosion also seriously injured his younger brother, Mohammed Hasham, 11, who was recovering last night at Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar.

"We were working in the shop, when a motorcycle came with a trolley behind it," Mr. Salim, 18, said. "Smoke, dust, everything went everywhere." The five soldiers injured in the worst attack yesterday were flown to a hospital at the Kandahar Airfield, the coalition's main base.

A military spokesman said their injuries are not life-threatening, although one soldier suffered broken bones.

These latest attacks cast doubt on the effectiveness of the recent Canadian-led offensive, code-named Operation Medusa, in the Panjwai District southwest of Kandahar city.

Just two weeks ago, Kandahar's governor announced that Canadian soldiers had routed the Taliban from the area.

The offensive was designed to encircle the insurgents in the area, but soldiers are still hunting for the insurgents' underground weapons caches, where many fighters are believed to have stowed guns and ammunition before fleeing the battlefield.

Governor Asadullah Khalid said foreign troops intend to stay in Panjwai and the neighbouring Zhari District to maintain security.

Road construction is a key part of Operation Medusa's final stage, which is to reconstruct the battle-scarred region.

Early this morning, Colonel Fred Lewis, the deputy commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's International Security Assistance Force, said Operation Medusa is "far from over." His voice shaking with emotion as he read the names of the dead soldiers, Col. Lewis said the insurgents are staging a last-ditch attempt "to save face." "They are attempting to win this final phase of [Operation Medusa]," he said.

"If we are able to do the reconstruction and development and the Afghans, the local people in that Panjwai area, say 'Hey, we will have a much better life under our own government' . . . they will go out of their way to keep the Taliban out."
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We will remember them!