Attackers Are Killed In Booby-trap Bid Blunder

[thedrifter]

10 January 2007
ATTACKERS ARE KILLED IN BOOBY-TRAP BID BLUNDER

BUNGLING Taliban fanatics have blown themselves to pieces trying to set a booby-trap near a British base in the Afghan desert.

Little was left of the threeman terror cell after the huge blast near Camp Price. Marines from J Company, 4 2 Commando, are among 250 British troops at the base.

Commanding officer Major Ewen Murchison, from Bearsden, Glasgow, said: "It was what we would describe as an own-goal."

The Taliban were trying to lay a massive anti-tank mine, which dated back to the Russian occupation 20 years ago.

The blast could be heard over a mile away back at Camp Price. The accident has delighted the marines and their Afghan National Army allies, who could also have been victims.

Sergeant Syeed Din, from the Afghan unit attached to the Gereshk base, was among the first on the scene last week.

He said: "We collected their clothes, a turban and a Kalashnikov. Their heads were not present or their legs.

"Pieces were blown over a far distance. The mine had the power to kill for 100 yards. It was very powerful.

"It would have killed anyone in a vehicle going over it."

Ellie

[DWG]

Hoorah for russian technology! Still killing insurgents after all these years. Think we can reverse the instructions on a bunch of old claymores and let the taliban "steal" them?

[thedrifter]

Royal Marines In Bloody Battle With Taliban
Wednesday January 10, 04:41 PM

More than 100 elite British troops in Afghanistan have fought a furious four-hour battle at close quarters with the Taliban. The battle ended when a pair of Harrier GR7 jump jets were called in to drop two 1,000lb bombs on the Taliban positions. Royal Marines were ambushed at dawn as they built checkpoints to keep insurgents away from a town in the Helmand province.

The rebels had been hiding in trenches and compounds just 40 metres away.

Troops were installing permanent vehicle checkpoints
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when around 50 Taliban fighters began attacking.

Accounts from the scene said the fighters leapt out of ditches in groups of four to open fire within a few yards of the British troops.

Major Ewen Murchison, the commander of J Company who led the battle, said: "That is one of the fiercest fights we've been in to date in terms of both the weight of fire that was coming our way and the proximity of the Taliban to my own troops."

He added: "We were under heavy small arms, RPG and mortar fire.

"There were 35 to 50 Taliban flying at us from numerous fire positions in and around the compounds and trenches employing their classic shoot and scoot tactics.

"During the course of the four hours I used the full range of military weapons available to me."

The British troops responded to the ambush with small arms and machine guns, before resorting to mortars and artillery and calling in Apache helicopter gunships.

No one from the multinational forces was injured in the battle.

It is not known how many Taliban were killed.

Ellie

[DWG]

Rule Brittannia!