French President Francois Hollande said Saturday France will begin its pullout from Afghanistan next month and complete it by year-end, after four French troops were killed on the eve of key elections.
Hollande said France would pay a “national homage” to the men killed in a Taliban suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan earlier Saturday and that the five other wounded would be repatriated rapidly. The withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan was one of Hollande’s presidential electoral promises. It “will begin in the month of July, will be carried out and be completed at the end of 2012,” the French president said. “In the meantime, everything must be done for our troops to meet their obligations but with the highest level of security and with the greatest vigilance for the lives of the soldiers. “I am making this engagement here and I will be the guarantor for this operation,” Hollande said in Tulle, where he was to attend a commemoration of the massacre of civilians by the Nazis on June 9, 1944. According to the French defence ministry, the soldiers targeted in Saturday’s attack were participating in a “control operation” in the province bordering Pakistan where insurgents are very active. Afghan interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told AFP the attacker was disguised as a woman wearing a burqa. Three of the five wounded were in critical condition Saturday. They were the first French soldiers to be lost in Afghanistan since January 20, when an Afghan soldier shot dead four unarmed soldiers and wounded 15 others. Some 3,500 French soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan, mainly in Kabul and in the eastern Kapisa province where Saturday’s attack occurred.