FORWARD OPERATING BASE JACKSON, Afghanistan The jarring blast near the American base sent up a mushroom cloud of smoke that drifted silently in the breeze. “Not good,” a U.S. Marine said. Minutes later, vehicles raced through the gates with the wounded, three Marines and half a dozen Afghans.
Some lay bloodied on stretchers as medics worked on them. Soon, a pair of helicopters swept in and scooped up the injured, including a bomb sniffer dog, for delivery to a military hospital.
Word spread. A suicide bomber in a car packed with explosives had attacked security forces in the Sangin district center, next to the Marine battalion headquarters in an area of southern Afghanistan that has seen some of the war's hardest fighting. Three Afghan police and four civilians were killed.