Bomb kills NATO soldier in Afghanistan, raises coalition death toll so far this year to 100

Bomb kills NATO soldier in Afghanistan, raises coalition death toll so far this year to 100

2011-03-27 17:43:00 GMT+7 (ICT)

KABUL (BNO NEWS) -- A coalition service member was killed in an attack in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said, raising the coalition death toll so far this year to 100.

Sunday's toll is a grim reminder that insurgent groups such as the Taliban are still able to inflict heavy losses on coalition forces, but the number is lower when compared to last year. Between January 1st and March 27th, 2010, a total of 131 coalition service members were killed in Afghanistan.

The overall coalition death toll also includes casualties from non-hostile incidents such as vehicle accidents, but the vast majority of service members are killed as a result of insurgent attacks. Most die in the southern region of Afghanistan, mainly due to improvised explosive device (IED) attacks.

The casualty on Sunday which raised the year's death toll to 100 was no different from most: ISAF said the service member died in southern Afghanistan as a result of an IED attack, but gave no other details.

The nationality of the fallen service member was also not immediately disclosed. "It is ISAF policy to defer casualty identification procedures to the relevant national authorities," an ISAF statement said.

Coalition casualties in Afghanistan have been rising sharply in recent years, with a total coalition death toll of 709 in 2010, making it the deadliest year for international troops since the war began in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) eventually declared that the attacks of 9/11, which killed nearly 3,000 people from scores of countries, was considered an attack on all NATO nations. The NATO-backed war in Afghanistan aims to defeat the Taliban and other insurgent groups in the country.

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