Halfway through this month, U.S. and coalition deaths in Afghanistan have already equaled record highs for operations there, with more than half of the casualties coming from improvised explosive devices.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell acknowledged that fatalities are continuing “at an alarming rate” and that more must be done to protect troops from roadside bombs and other indirect attacks.
“We’ve got to tackle this threat from basically 360 degrees,” he said. “We’ve got to get them from the air. We’ve got to monitor the roads. We’ve got to watch patterns of life for these IED networks. We’ve got to provide force-protection measures that will keep our troops safe if they do encounter them. And we’ve got to increase our intelligence on the ground to ultimately dismantle these groups.”
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