Convoy Attacked
The fighting began when the militants attacked an Afghan National Army re-supply convoy on Highway 611 near FOB Robinson, killing two soldiers. Although the locally-contracted convoy was unknown to Coalition troops prior to its reporting of contact with insurgents, two British Harrier aircraft were dispatched from Kandahar Airfield, along with a pair of American Apache gunships. After the militants were scattered two hours after the fighting began, the convoy was hit a short distance later by an improvised explosive device along the roadside, killing six soldiers, and was stranded 9–13 miles from the base.
At approximately 10:00 p.m., a Quick Reaction Force, made up of 38 men comprising 7 Platoon of C Company of 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was deployed from the airfield in American helicopters, to escort the convoy back to its base.
Read more about this topic: Friendly Fire Incident At Sangin
Famous quotes containing the words convoy and/or attacked:
“Pilgrim-manned, the Mayflower in a dream
Has been her anxious convoy in to shore.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“The popularity of disaster movies ... expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)