Demining dog dies in blast at Bagram Base

BAGRAM AIR BASE: A demining dog was killed in a mine explosion at Bagram Air Base the US military said in a statement on Thursday.

“Goya, a Ronco mine-clearing German shepherd, was killed at Bagram in a mine explosion yesterday,” it said.

The dog had been working for Ronco, a US firm contracted to clear mines from Bagram Air Base, headquarters of the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan 50 kilometres north of Kabul.

The dog had served in six different countries clearing mines and had cleared more than seven million square metres of mine-contaminated land, it said.

After 23 years of war, Afghanistan is littered with land mines and other unexploded ordnance which continue to kill. On Tuesday two people were killed and 29 injured when the tractor and trailer transporting them went over a Soviet-era mine near the main northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Meanwhile, coalition forces seized one person and a cache of weapons near Shkin in southeast Afghanistan, the site of a firefight last Friday in which two US servicemen were killed. The cache included mortar rounds and components for rocket- propelled grenades.

The man was armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and was caught running away from the scene. He had not fired at coalition troops.

Another cache of weapons was found in a shipping container north of Kandahar air base in southern Afghanistan. That haul included eight machineguns, two anti-aircraft guns, mines, explosives and ammunition. —AFP

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