Poland
Polish Army
Private 1st Class, Oddzial Specjalny Zandarmerii Wojskowej
6/15/2010, Ghazni, Afghanistan
On 15th June 2010, Taliban insurgents launched a missile attack on the coalition military Warrior base. Polish Private 1st Class, Grzegorz Bukowski, aged 29, and serving with the Polish Military Police, was killed by shrapnel from the attack. Two other soldiers were injured in the incident.
Lance Corporal Grzegorz Bukowski has become the 18th Polish soldier to die in Afghanistan after an insurgent attack, Tuesday morning, informs the army press office. The 29 year-old soldier was mortally wounded by shrapnel from an exploding mortar shell. Two other soldiers who were injured in the attack on the Warrior base, one of four bases hosting 2,600 Polish soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, were transported to the nearby Ghazni base.
“A rapid reaction unit was sent to the site where the mortar was launched from immediately after the attack,” said Major Piotr Jaszczuk from the operational command of the Polish contingent. “We are examining the circumstances of this attack,” added Jaszczuk. Lance Corporal Bukowski was single and served in the military police based in Minsk Mazowiecki, central Poland. In Afghanistan, he was involved in the training of local police and was on his second tour. He had previously served in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The attack comes the day after four Polish soldiers from the same Warrior base were wounded by a road side bomb and four days after Corporal Milosz Gorka was killed by another IED.
“More and more frequent insurgent attacks are the response to large-scale pre-emptive actions carried out by Polish troops,” Major Jaszczuk told Polish Radio, adding that recently Polish soldiers detained several dozen insurgents and seized numerous weapons and ammunition and several hundred kilograms of explosives.
“Recently we eliminated several dozen Taliban (…) and the rebels are trying to take revenge,” says Major Jaszczuk
At the weekend following the death of Corporal Gorka, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk said that the government will be looking into a timetable for the withdrawal of Polish troops at the NATO Lisbon summit in November. Grzegorz Napieralski, the leftwing candidate in the June 20 presidential elections, accused the government of using the war in Afghanistan for electioneering purposes.
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