WASHINGTON, May 15 (UPI) -- Two Afghan U.N. relief workers were killed Friday in a rocket attack in western Afghanistan, underlining the continued danger from Taliban and other fighters.
U.S. military and Afghan officials say they expect tough fighting this summer as the Afghan government and NATO moves to exert more control over areas of the country that are host to insurgents.
The rocket attack occurred near Herat, close to the Iranian border. The United Nations believes the car carrying three UNICEF workers, including a doctor, was hit by a rocket.
Nearly three dozen aid workers were killed in Afghanistan last year.
Afghanistan is also becoming steadily more dangerous for U.S. troops. Nearly half of the almost 150 Americans killed-in-action since 2001 were killed in 2005.
A U.S. official in Afghanistan said the spike in casualties in 2005 was attributable to several factors, no least among them two helicopter crashes -- one of them shot down -- that killed more than 30 soldiers.
Moreover, U.S. soldiers conducted several large-scale offensive operations "often pressing into areas of known enemy sanctuary."
"Our assessment is that U.S. forces initiate contact with enemy forces three times more often than the enemy," the official said. "Those aggressive tactics increase dramatically the number of enemy contacts, which in turn has affected the number of casualties over the last year."
Improvised explosive devices of increasing sophistication and firepower have also been seen in greater numbers in Afghanistan.
"IED incidents have increased at a rate well above past trends. Still, our numbers do not approach the numbers seen in Iraq and the increase we've seen must be balanced against the baseline numbers before 2005, which were quite low," the official said.
The official would not release the number of incidents for operational security reasons, he said.
The official says he see no direct link between Afghanistan and Iraq with regard to IEDs, and there is no evidence that fighters in Iraq are migrating to Afghanistan.
"However, there are certainly similarities; further, these (tactics, techniques and procedures) do not represent high-technology and the information can easily be gleaned from the Internet. While the two insurgencies are not directly linked, both are facilitated and to some degree inspired by al-Qaida," the official said.
