| From KOMO TV komonews.com
12/15/10:
Yelm HS grad killed in Afghanistan
Submitted by Associated Press on Wednesday, December 15th, 07:30am
Cpl. Sean M. Collins
One of the six soldiers killed by a suicide blast Sunday in Afghanistan was from Yelm.
The News Tribune of Tacoma reports 25-year-old Cpl. Sean M. Collins was a 2004 graduate of Yelm High School.
His mother, Linda Collins, is a teacher at a Yelm middle school.
Sean Collins listed his home town at Ewa Beach, Hawaii. He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Ky., and previously served two deployments in Iraq.
The suicide bomb attack that killed Collins and five other soldiers used enough explosives to bring down the building the soldiers were in, their commander said Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. John Campbell said the attack vehicle, which officials in Afghanistan said was a minibus, was loaded with an estimated 1,000 pounds of explosives.
He said the vehicle got past an Afghan security point near a joint NATO-Afghan outpost, hit a mud wall and then exploded just outside the building, which collapsed on top of the soldiers. He didn't describe the type of building they were in.
He said the outpost was in the Zhari district of Kandahar province, the Taliban's homeland and where the military has launched offensives to clear out insurgents this year.
"This was an area that we had gone through and they were continuing to clear it. I don't think they were completely done with the clearance," he said. The soldiers were living together with Afghans in the outpost, he said.
NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz said Monday several suspects had been arrested in Afghanistan for the bombing.
Campbell stressed that the Afghans at the security point did attempt to stop the vehicle, but he couldn't provide details as the investigation was continuing. He was also not sure whether the attackers used Afghan security uniforms, a tactic that has been used in other attacks on NATO bases. |
