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Head of the French army in Afghanistan narrowly escapes death in rocket attack

French General Marcel Druart

By Jerome Starkey / London Times

The head of the French army in Afghanistan narrowly escaped a Taleban rocket attack this morning which left four people dead and injured more than 40.

Brigadier General Marcel Druart was meeting tribal elders in Kapisa, just 30 miles outside Kabul, when a volley of rockets smashed into a crowded bazaar, nearby.

Eyewitnesses said that two rockets landed within 200 metres of a government building in Tagab, where the general and his men were meeting elders and local officials.

Druart, 53, was unhurt in the attack, which came a day after more than 700 French troops launched an offensive in the valley.

Troops at the scene claimed that the shura, or meeting, was the insurgents’ target, although no Nato troops were hurt.

A French captain, identified only as Michel, said that three of the dead were children. At least half the wounded were in a critical condition, military officials said.

Three American Black Hawk and a French Caracal helicopter took the wounded to a military hospital at Bagram airbase.

The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack, but they admitted they didn’t realise who was in the meeting.

“Our soldiers knew there were foreign forces in Tagab and they attacked them,” said Zabiullah Mujahed. “We didn’t know if they were French or American.”

Brigardier General Druart, a father of three who served in Lebanon in 1983, in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 and Albania 1997, was taken to the French headquarters.

He was in Tagab to explain the objectives of an operation launched on Sunday, involving 700 French troops backed by at least 100 armoured cares and around 100 Afghan soldiers.

The meeting, attended by about 40 Afghan officials, including the local police chief, the regional deputy governor, tribal chiefs and religious elders, had been going for about 90 minutes when the rockets screeched overhead.

Nato forces said that they identified the launch site and retaliated with artillery. Sporadic shelling could be heard through the afternoon.

The offensive aimed to secure the area for a planned road, financed by the European Union, to move supplies from neighboring Pakistan, said that Colonel Francis Chanson, head of France's 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment.

Nato forces have patrol bases along the Tagab Valley but troops have struggled to control the mountainous terrain, often used as a staging post for attacks on Kabul.

In September, two French soldiers were killed and eight wounded in a roadside bomb attack in the Tagab area.

Separately in southern Afghanistan, militants attacked a police checkpoint in the violent province of Kandahar overnight, killing at least three policemen and wounding another six, police criminal director of Kandahar Pashton Moamand said.

However, a local police official from the Argandab district where the attack occurred had a higher death toll. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that eight policemen were killed and three seriously wounded. He said that a group of militants attacked the checkpoint from three sides with gunfire and grenades at about 2 am on Monday and then fled.