Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan in attack

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
An Australian soldier was killed in Afghanistan during a Taliban rocket attack, the Defense Department said Monday. The soldier was killed instantly Sunday when a Taliban-fired rocket exploded in a compound in the southern province of Uruzgan where a group of Australian troops was stationed, Defense Force Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston told reporters in Canberra. No other soldiers or civilians were injured in the attack, he said. The Defense Department declined to release the soldier's identity, but said he had been in Afghanistan for several weeks and was a third of the way through his deployment. Eight Australian soldiers have been killed in the war in Afghanistan since 2001, when a US-led coalition invaded to overthrow the hard-line Taliban regime for sheltering al-Qaida terrorist leaders.