Four Canadian soldiers were killed on Sunday in a major anti-Taliban operation in southern Afghanistan as Nato said the rebel death toll in the first two days of the campaign was around 200.
British forces were, meanwhile, preparing to repatriate the remains of 14 soldiers killed when their plane crashed on Saturday, the first day of Operation Medusa which involves about 2,000 Afghan and Nato military personnel.
The commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan, General David Fraser, confirmed at a late night media briefing in Kandahar city that four Canadian soldiers were killed and "a number of others wounded." Afghanistan's defence ministry had announced the deaths hours earlier, and said six soldiers were also wounded.
"We had air strikes yesterday. Today we launched our ground offensive and we met the enemy," defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said. The new deaths took to 19 the number of Canadian soldiers killed in enemy action this year; 31 have been killed since Canadian forces deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, months after the ousting of the Taliban government.
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