KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Two roadside bombings and a hail of rocket-propelled grenades killed four Canadian soldiers and injured 10 more Thursday in the single heaviest day of death and injury Canada has endured in Afghanistan.
Three Canadian soldiers died and six others were injured when suspected Taliban fighters attacked a NATO patrol near the village of Pashmul, west of Kandahar. No details on the identities of the three were immediately available.
Another Canadian soldier was killed and one injured when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb planted on a highway near Kandahar city.
All four of the dead were from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton.
Cpl. Christopher Reid of Truro, N.S., died in an area where Canadian soldiers have been advancing on Taliban insurgents, said Col. Tom Putt, deputy commander of Task Force Afghanistan.
Three more Canadians were hurt when a second roadside bomb exploded along the same road a short time later.
"That area west of Kandahar is known to be a Taliban area," Putt said. "That's why we're there."
The wounded were receiving top medical treatment from coalition force hospitals, said Brig.-Gen. David Fraser.
The seriously wounded were evacuated to a hospital at the Canadian base in Kandahar and a British facility. All were in stable condition.
Fraser says he visited the soldiers in hospital in Kandahar and they're all doing well.
"The operation today did come at a cost, but the operation will carry on in a co-ordinated fashion with Afghan security forces," Fraser said. "The cost today was significant. The cost against the Taliban was even more significant."
Thursday's fatalities brought to 23 the number of soldiers killed since Canadians moved into Afghanistan in 2002. Fifteen have died in the last six months.
Reid was remembered Thursday as an avid outdoorsman who loved being a soldier and was eager to get to Afghanistan, said Sgt. Mike McNeil, a friend who'd known Reid since they were in the militia together in Truro in the early 1990s.
"Chris was very excited to go. Very excited. He was actually disappointed that he had missed some previous trips to Afghanistan," McNeil recalled from Halifax.
"He was very proud to be in the army, an excellent soldier and he was probably one of the most outgoing people I've ever met."
Speaking in Cornwall, Ont., Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered the country's condolences to Reid's family but pledged to stand behind Canada's mission in Afghanistan.
"What the men and women in harm's way want and need to know at moments like this is that the government and Canadians stand behind their mission," Harper said.
"Through good times and bad, this government will honour their sacrifice, we will stand behind their mission and we are proud of the work that they are doing."
Reid died overnight when a Canadian Light Armoured Vehicle, or LAV-3, was struck by a roadside bomb.
Another soldier in the vehicle was injured in the attack, suffering non-life-threatening injuries. A second roadside bomb exploded a short while later, hitting another LAV-3, and injuring three other Canadian soldiers.
All suffered non-life-threatening wounds.
Both attacks happened just hours after a memorial service was held in Montreal for Cpl. Jason Warren.
He and Cpl. Francisco Gomez of Edmonton died July 22 when a suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives beside their Bison armoured vehicle.
Gomez and Warren were interred Thursday at the Beechwood National Military Cemetery in Ottawa.
McNeil remembered Reid as a larger-than-life character.
"Chris was always one of those guys who I thought was going to outlive everybody. He was tough, fearless," he said.
His death came amid another day of carnage in Afghanistan.
A suicide bomber in a car blew himself up in a crowded town market in southern Afghanistan near where NATO troops were on patrol. Twenty-one civilians were killed.
Thirteen people were injured in the blast at the market in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province, said provincial government spokesman Dawood Ahmadi.
Some of the victims were children, said Interior Ministry spokesman Yousef Stanezai.
Interim Liberal leader Bill Graham said the latest Canadian death underscores the dangers of the Afghanistan mission.
"I think we have to be constantly explaining to Canadians why we're risking the lives of our young people there," Graham said St. John's, N.L. "We knew this was going to be a very tough mission."
He added he still believes Canadian soldiers belong in the war-torn country.
"I believe very strongly that they're doing the right thing, and I think Canadians, given an opportunity, would believe that, too," he said.
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