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June 05, 2008
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Thursday
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Jamadi-ul-Awwal 30, 1429
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French troops to deploy near Kabul
KABUL, June 4: About 700 French reinforcements to the Nato force battling a growing insurgency in Afghanistan are to be sent to the volatile province of Kapisa near Kabul, the French force said.
President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the extra troops, on top of about 1,670 already here, at a Nato summit in Bucharest but did not say where they would be deployed.
It has been decided they would go to Kapisa northeast of the capital, French military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Frederic Thomazo said this week. They are due to arrive in July or August.
Kapisa does not see the levels of insurgent unrest that blight the rest of eastern Afghanistan but there are regular incidents, particularly in the strategic Tagab area about 50 kilometres from Kabul.
US soldiers are currently operating in the area.
France will also send military instructors to train the Afghan army in the southern province of Uruzgan, a Taliban stronghold, and is due in the coming months to take the rotating Nato command for the capital region.
Most of the French troops in Afghanistan work in Kabul and there are about 170 in the southern city of Kandahar where six French fighter jets are stationed.
Nato’s International Security Assistance Force has steadily grown to about 52,000 soldiers. —AFP
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