Four Canadian Soldiers and
Journalist Killed in Afghanistan
by C. L. Cook
The
Canadian Broadcast Corporation says four Canadian Forces (CF) soldiers and a Calgary Herald reporter were killed today in a single roadside bomb attack outside Kandahar City, Afghanistan.
Reporter Michelle Lang, killed with four soldiers in ambush attack.
Michelle Lang was accompanying the Canadian patrol this afternoon when the armoured vehicle she was in was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The CF has withheld the names of the soldiers killed, pending notification of next of kin.
Lang's colleagues remembered her today, Lorne Motley, editor at the Herald saying;
"This
has been a really tough day here, probably the blackest day I can
remember in the recent history of the Calgary Herald. Above her journalism she was kind-hearted and warm and great. Just
one of those people you can love. She was professionally at the top of
her craft."
The deaths mark the 135th, 6th, 7th, and 138th Canadian Forces members killed in Afghanistan since 2002, and Michelle Lang becomes the fourth Canadian civilian, and first Canadian journalist to die there.
Another attack in Afghanistan today killed eight members of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The agents were approached by a suicide bomber at an American military base in the eastern province of Khost.
The attacks come at a sensitive time for western relations in the country, where there is outrage in the streets in the aftermath of an aerial attack* Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai says killed mostly schoolchildren. NATO disputes this, saying only "insurgents" were killed in the attack.
[*Update: What was initially reported as an air assault, it is now famously clear was a raid on a house, where the occupants were bound and killed, at least eight among those killed being children. See
here for more...and
here. - ed.]
