Australian Troop Accommodation Targetted by RPG.

December 17

The missile hit the side of the building and a second rocket-propelled grenade fell 50 metres wide, A Department of Defence spokeswoman said.

No Australian soldiers were wounded, but there was no information regarding civilians, the spokeswoman said.

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Another attempt by militants to target as many member countries/nations of the coalition prior to
the upcoming election(s). In this case, thankfully no-one was hurt.

Sanc'.

This building that was hit is inside the 'Green Zone', correct? This is not the first time the Green Zone has been hit by rpg's. RPG's have a maximum range of 500 meters, stationary targets. How is it that militants can get that close to the GZ without being detected and neutralized?

BTW, I got a kick out of the nickname for the Aussie security attachment - Diggers?

jsobecky, here is a history of how the term 'Diggers' came about.
History of the Diggers

Sanc'.

Gotta get me one of those slouch hats. Fair dinkum!

Too bloody right mate.

[edit on 18-12-2004 by Warpspeed]

Could not even spell that. Too much beer.

[edit on 18-12-2004 by Warpspeed]

I reckon us Aussies are quite lucky in that the majority of our ground combat troops in Iraq are Special Forces (SAS etc) with the remainder being suppy/air/navy I think.

As for the term 'Diggers' hehe yeah, dont forget 'Desert Rats' too, which is what our troops were called when they were fighting the Desert Fox in North africa in WWII.

Anyways its good news that we havent lost a troop over there yet (at least to my knowledge).

We did lose one guy, he died when a vehicle went over an embankment and overturned many months ago. It was a simple auto accident nothing to do with hostilities.

Australian troops are guarding the Australian Embassy and embassy personnel only, they are really having nothing at all to do with any of the front line fighting over there. We only maintain a fairly small presence for political reasons.

There must be some minimum viable size of force that can protect itself and do the job, and that is about all we have over there these days, only a few hundred. Most of those are probably involved in logistics, food, fuel, communications, that sort of thing.

If they decide to shut down the embassy, all our guys will be coming home.