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KABUL — Roadside bombs — the biggest killer of U.S. soldiers — killed eight more Americans on Tuesday, driving the U.S. death toll to a record level for the third time in four months.
The homemade bombs, also called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are responsible for between 70 and 80 percent of the casualties among U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan and have become a weapon of "strategic influence," said Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz in Washington.The attacks Tuesday followed one of the deadliest days for the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan — grim milestones likely to fuel the debate in the United States over whether the conflict is worth the sacrifice.The latest casualties bring to 55 the number of Americans killed in October in Afghanistan. The next highest toll was in August, when 51 U.S. soldiers died and the nation held the first round of its presidential election amid a wave of violence.By comparison, the deadliest month of the Iraq conflict for U.S. forces was November 2004, when 137 Americans died during a major assault to clear insurgents from the city of Fallujah.Both attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday took place in the southern province of Kandahar, said Capt. Adam Weece, a spokesman for American forces in the south. The Americans were patrolling in armored vehicles when a bomb ripped through one of them, killing seven service members and an Afghan civilian, U.S. forces spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said.The eighth American died in a separate bombing elsewhere in the south, also while patrolling in a military vehicle, Vician said.The number of effective IED attacks in Afghanistan has grown from 19 in September 2007 to 106 last month."It’s a weapon system that the enemy has figured out has strategic impact," said Metz, who leads the U.S. military organization with the task of defeating IEDs. The latest deaths came one day after 11 American soldiers were killed in separate helicopter crashes, marking the biggest loss of American life on a single day in four years.In the United States, it was reported that a former Marine who fought in Iraq and became a diplomat in a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan has resigned in a high-profile protest of the Afghan war.Foreign service officer Matthew Hoh is the first U.S. official known to have quit in protest of the war, according to The Washington Post, which reported Hoh’s resignation in Tuesday’s editions. Hoh said he stepped down six months into the job because he believes that the war is fueling the insurgency.
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