[ADN Kronos] Taliban fighters on Tuesday claimed they had shot down a pilotless NATO drone aircraft in Afghanistan's southeastern Khost province, Pajhwok Afghan news agency reported. Khost borders Pakistan's volatile northwestern Kurram tribal area. The news came as US president Barack Obama was reported to be sending an extra 13,000 troops to Afghanistan to combat the increasingly violent Taliban-led insurgency.
The additional forces being sent to the war-wracked country in Obama's unannounced move are engineers, medical personnel, intelligence experts and military police, the Washington Post daily said on Tuesday, quoting US defence officials.
The extra support troops come on top of the 21,000 combat troops authorised in March bring the total build-up Obama has approved for Afghanistan to 34,000.
The buildup has raised the number of US troops deployed to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan above the peak during the Iraq "surge" that former US president George W. Bush ordered, officials said.
The deployment does not change the maximum number of US service members expected to soon be in Afghanistan: 68,000, more than double the number there when Bush left office, the daily noted. |