October 9, 2006:
NATO has compiled some numbers on the military operations NATO troops have been involved in during the last few months in southern Afghanistan. The NATO force of some 20,000 lost 19 dead, while the Taliban lost at least a thousand, out of a force of 3-5,000. The Taliban have been terrorizing Kandahar, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces, in the south, for the last four months, causing some 80,000 people to flee their homes, at least temporarily. However, NATO combat operations have killed only 53 civilians. Taliban death squads have killed and/or kidnapped several hundred civilians. Over a hundred Afghan soldiers and police have been killed.