Staff Sgt. Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion, 36, from Waikoloa, Hawaii, died Aug. 12, 2018, of wounds sustained while conducting combat patrol operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan (DoD photo)
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Last updated on Wednesday, August 15, 2018
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - A U.S. Army soldier has died from wounds sustained when a roadside bomb detonated near him while he was on patrol in southern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said — the fifth American service personnel to be killed this year in that war zone.
Staff Sgt. Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion, 36, from Waikoloa, Hawaii, died Aug. 12, 2018, of wounds sustained while conducting combat patrol operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan (DoD photo)
"Staff Sgt. Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion, 36, from Waikoloa, Hawaii, died Aug. 12, 2018, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was conducting combat patrol operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan," the Pentagon said Monday in a statement sent to reporters. "The incident is under investigation."
Tom Squitieri, of Talk Media News, reports, Transfiguracion was a member of the U.S. Army special forces. Three coalition soldiers also have died in Afghanistan this year.
Transfiguracion's death came as the Taliban continued a fierce assault on Ghazni, located roughly 75 miles from Kabul. The attack had killed about 100 Afghan security forces and 20 civilians between Friday and Monday; it continued Tuesday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Ghanzi sits on the nation's main southern highway.
The assaut, which has left Afghan security forces reeling comes almost one year after President Trump announced his new strategy for Afghanistan on August 21.
"The new Taliban offensives in Afghanistan are yet another warning of the fact that the U.S. is involved in a war of attrition that it has no guarantee of winning at the military level, and where it has no apparent strategy for dealing with Afghanistan's lack of political unity, leadership, and failure to give its people economic progress and freedom from corruption," Anthony Cordesman, a defense scholar at the Center for for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in his report Monday.
"The U.S. has now reached the point where the third Administration in a row is fighting wars where the U.S. often scores serious tactical victories and makes claims that it is moving toward some broader form of victory but cannot announce any clear strategy for actually ending any given war or bringing a stable peace," he wrote.
Pentagon officials and regional commanders have said a metric for success would be having control of 80 percent of the country's provinces under Kabul's control. Figures published in May by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said Afghan security forces firmly controlled 56 percent of the country's 407 districts.
Information Talk Media News, http://www.talkmedianews.com
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