"20-fold rise in Afghan bombing missions in two years"
"IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent January 18 2008
NATO and US jets carried out 20 times as many bombing missions in Afghanistan last year as in 2005, with the bulk of the raids in support of UK and Canadian troops fighting in Helmand and Kandahar.
The number of airstrikes reached 3572 in 2007, twice the rate of 2006, Nato's International Support and Assistance Force said yesterday. There were between 170 and 180 such missions in 2005.
Human-rights groups monitoring the counter-insurgency campaign said there were about 300 Afghan civilian fatalities as a result of targeting errors or mistaken identity last year, triple the rate for 2006.
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US Central Command, which co-ordinates all alliance air activity, said many strikes were in support of small, special forces teams engaging Taliban insurgents in remote areas beyond easy reach for conventional ground units.
British soldiers have fired more than 4.7 million rounds of rifle and machine-gun ammunition in actions which were described by their officers as the most intensive since the Korean War.
Meanwhile, Duncan Hunter, the senior Republican politician on the US congressional armed services committee, has accused America's European allies of shirking dangerous duty in Afghanistan.
He also called for the reversal of an order to send 3200 US Marines to Afghanistan to help counter an expected Taliban spring offensive.
Mr Hunter wrote to General James Conway, the US Marines' commandant, to say: "Installation of a new presence in Afghanistan will signal to recalcitrant allies that Uncle Sam is willing to allow them to shirk their fair burden in this war."
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