Rebels attacked a group of road crew workers on Thursday as they were working on a road project about 30 miles on the eastern side of Gardez, the provincial capital. The road has been an on going project now since 2007 and the Glassco Sky company has the contract. The attack was on a roadway not far from the Gardez-Khost Highway. The project is a 64 mile long road that has proven to be a very problematic and costly project.
There have been possibly over 364 attacks on the project since it began in 2007. There has been 19 lives lost before now, most of the deaths have been Afghan workers. The project is being paid for by the United States Agency of International Development. They have discovered that there is much corruption and little security in the area. It is hard to encourage new development in a place such at that. That cost of the project is possibly going to be as much as $176 million dollars.
The battle with the rebels started at close to 2am Thursday morning. How many rebels were involved in the attack isn’t known. There were 8 guards killed as they tried to fight off the rebel forces.
There was no communication from the workers calling outside the construction area for help. It is possible their cell phones were down due to no service from the towers. It is a known thing that the rebel forces will force the cell phone providers to turn off access to areas so that the insurgents can move through areas without being turned into authorities.
As word got out the next day, villagers went to the scene and found bodies scattered about . There were vehicles and construction equipment that was destroyed in the attack.
The battle lasted for 2 hours. There were 80 people working at the time. Of the 80 there were only 8 that escaped without any injuries. There were 20 more of the workers injured and 17 have yet to be found. There were at least 35 that died in the attack. 8 of the dead are guards that were trying to fight off the insurgents.
The Taliban has claimed that they preformed the act, but it is thought that another group called the Haqqani may actually be responsible. They are a much more brutal group then the Taliban and the attack happened in an area that is mainly in the Haqqani network.
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