Five U.S. troops die in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan - Five U.S. troops died in attacks in southern Afghanistan, military officials said yesterday, adding to this year's record death toll.

The Obama administration is debating whether to add more troops to the 21,000-strong influx that began pouring into the country over the summer. Most of those have gone to the south, where they have been assailed by roadside bombs and ambushes as they battle for Taliban-controlled areas.

The commander of U.S. and NATO forces, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, submitted a request for the additional troops to his Pentagon bosses yesterday, defense officials said.

It is not clear how many troops McChrystal requested. Officials have estimated he needs 20,000 to 40,000 additional combat forces to pursue an expanded counterinsurgency strategy.

McChrystal told CBS's 60 Minutes that the strength of the Taliban took him by surprise when he arrived this summer.

"I think that in some areas that the breadth of the violence, the geographic spread of violence, is a little more than I would have gathered," he said in the interview to be broadcast tomorrow.

This has been the deadliest year for U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion to oust the Islamic extremist Taliban. The five deaths announced yesterday bring to 214 the number of troops killed so far this year, well ahead of the 151 who died in all of 2008.

Four soldiers died Thursday in the same small district of southeastern Zabul province. Three were killed when their Stryker vehicle triggered a bomb in its path, and the fourth was shot to death in an insurgent attack, said Lt. Robert Carr, a U.S. military spokesman. The Stryker brigade arrived in Zabul as part of the summertime surge to try to secure the region ahead of Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Marine was fatally shot while on foot patrol in southwestern Nimroz province, said Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a military spokeswoman.

About half of all Americans oppose increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, according to a poll released yesterday. The New York Times/CBS News poll found that only 29 percent of respondents believed the United States should add troops in Afghanistan, down from 42 percent in February. The survey, conducted Sept. 19-23, had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Yesterday, election officials agreed to recount results from a sample of 10 percent of polling stations with suspect results in a push to release long-delayed results of last month's disputed election before winter makes any runoff vote impossible.

Though preliminary results show President Hamid Karzai winning, there are enough questionable ballots that the recounts could force him into a runoff with his top challenger.

Osama bin Laden demanded that European countries pull their troops out of Afghanistan in a new audiotape yesterday, warning of "retaliation" against them for their alliance with the United States in the war.

The al-Qaeda leader denounced NATO air strikes in Afghanistan that have killed civilians and warned that European countries would be held accountable alongside the Americans unless they withdraw.

The audiotape, just under five minutes long, was posted on Islamic extremist Web sites. It comes after a series of al-Qaeda videos this week that directly addressed Germany and threatened attacks over Berlin's military mission in Afghanistan.

Those earlier videos featured a little-known German Algerian extremist and have raised concerns among German authorities ahead of parliamentary elections.

Bin Laden's tape came as a voice-over on a video that had English and German subtitles translating his speech, along with a still photo of bin Laden in front

of a map of Europe.

He predicted that American forces would soon pull out

of Afghanistan, abandoning their NATO allies, and warned that al-Qaeda would then retaliate against the Europeans.

- Associated Press

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