6 U.S. Soldiers, 12 Civilians Killed

Militants continue to fight back against the intensified coalition war effort in Afghanistan’s east and south. Six American troops died in attacks Saturday, from small-arms fire, roadside bombs, and explosions. Twenty-three U.S. soldiers have died there so far in July. Meanwhile, gunmen shot 11 Pakistani Shia tribesmen to death in the eastern part of the country, and one civilian died when a bomb strapped to a motorbike exploded in Kandahar. Two coalition convoys were attacked in the Kunduz and in Khost; two German soldiers were injured in the Kunduz roadside bomb. During a nighttime raid in the eastern Paktia province, a combined commando unit killed one Taliban leader and took eight others, though locals say those men were not militants. In Mazar-i-Sharif, in the north, a mass rally of thousands of Afghans protested a separate night raid that took two security guards’ lives. In June, 103 coalition troops died, 60 of them American, the most in a month since the war began.