AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Romania will send up to 200 troops to southern Afghanistan from next month after a NATO call for reinforcements, a Romanian official said on Sept. 18.
“They will go the south, most probably Kandahar,” the official, who requested anonymity, said of the region which has seen some of the worst of recent fighting between NATO troops and Taliban insurgents.
He said the contingent, now on standby in Romania, would help relieve an existing battalion of about 400 Romanian troops in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of Romanian soldiers there to about 500.
NATO, whose headquarters are in Brussels, called earlier this month for between 2,000 and 2,500 extra troops for Afghanistan, acknowledging it had underestimated the intensity of Taliban resistance.
