Afghanistan: Roadside Bomb Kills Canadian Soldier

Trooper Brian Richard Good, 42, of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his armoured vehicle.

Trooper Brian Richard Good, 42, of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his armoured vehicle in the Shah Wali Kowt District, about 35 kilometres north of Kandahar City. There were three other Canadians. from the same unit ,injured in the blast. The soldiers were flown to the Kandahar Airfield Base and were reported in good condition. “Brian Good was an easygoing individual who would do anything for anyone,” Colonel Jamie Cade, deputy commander of coalition forces in Kandahar told reporters this evening. “He had a distinctive laugh, a smile that reached from ear to ear. He is best remembered by his friends in the battle group for his love for his family. He spoke of them often.” Shah Wali Kot is a rugged rural area north of Kandahar city and one of several districts where Taliban insurgents are gaining ground against foreign and local security forces. Trooper Good has two young daughters and is the 10th Canadian soldier in Afghanistan to die in the past five weeks; all of them felled by roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which insurgents have planted in culverts and ditches along the main highways west and north of Kandahar City. Canadian forces have made headway tracking and dismantling bomb-making cells across the province, but the hunt takes time and manpower. “It is definitely a plague and it is difficult to fight,” Col. Cade told reporters. “It is a few people implanting explosives in commonly used routes and some not-so-common routes. It takes a lot of time, work and effort, a wide amount of intelligence-collection technology. “We are finding more than we strike but sometimes the insurgents get lucky and sadly that was the case today.” Col. Cade said. “They are not winning any friends with the locals through the use of IEDS, because it's not just coalition forces that are threatened by IEDs,” he said. “It's the people themselves. And innocent people are being killed by IEDs throughout Afghanistan. It is not a form of warfare that is going to win for them.”