KABUL — Canadian combat engineers wearing face masks and crawling on their bellies continued the painful, painstaking and dangerous process Friday of piecing together what blew a jeep apart, killing two soldiers.

Troops on the scene said it could be a week before the cool-headed sappers complete their work, clearing mines and combing the ground for fragments over a radius of 200 metres around the creekbed where a light Iltis vehicle was blown beyond recognition Thursday.

Equipment and pieces of the unarmoured jeep were strewn everywhere in the dusty, scrubby, rolling hills 3.5 kilometres southwest of the main Canadian base in Kabul.

The vehicle was still burning Friday morning, almost 24 hours after Sgt. Robert Alan Short, 42, of Fredericton and Cpl. Robbie Christopher Beerenfenger, 29, of Ottawa were killed and three other paratroopers were wounded in the blast.

Soldiers said the engine block was so hot that it still couldn't be touched late in the day, when pipers and pallbearers were back in camp practising their roles for a Saturday memorial service on a hastily built parade square.

"If you didn't know what an Iltis looked like, you wouldn't know it was an Iltis," said one soldier, who asked not to be identified.

The engineers hope to determine through forensic examination and crater analysis what it was that killed Short, the section commander, and Beerenfenger, a mechanized infantryman on secondment to Para Company, 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment.

Incredibly, the driver of the lead vehicle, Cpl. Thomas Stirling, 23, of Assiniboia, Sask., was thrown clear and survived the blast with cuts, bruises and third-degree burns to his hands.

He will be moved to a military hospital in Germany Saturday and will return to Canada sometime after the bodies of his fallen comrades.

Some of the dead soldiers' closest colleagues were to make the trip back to Canada with them while the NATO peace-support operation continued in Kabul. They were expected to arrive in Trenton, Ont., on Sunday.

Two paratroopers in the second vehicle, 20 to 30 metres behind Short's Iltis, received minor cuts and bruises, Canadian military officials said.

They are Master Cpl. Jason Cory Hamilton, 33, of Regina and Cpl. Cameron Lee Laidlaw, 25, of Oromocto, N.B. A third soldier in the second vehicle was uninjured. Maj.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, the top Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, said Friday a decision as to whether Laidlaw and Hamilton will be allowed to stay in Kabul will be made later.

At Camp Julien, home to the 3RCR Battle Group, soldiers did as soldiers do - burying themselves in tasks. Grim as they were, they were resolute in their attitudes as they planned ceremonies and launched still more patrols.

The Iltis is the main mode of transportation for Canada's light-infantry soldiers - small enough to travel Kabul's narrow alleys and streets, and with enough kick to negotiate dry creekbeds and rugged goat trails.

It has, however, been the object of derision among the troops for its propensity to break down and its cramped, open seating that leaves them vulnerable in the capital's crowded markets and choking traffic jams.

In Ottawa, Canadian Alliance MP Jay Hill attacked Defence Minister John McCallum in the House of Commons during Friday's question period about the vehicles chosen for the patrol.

"The question remains: why were these soldiers out in that area with these unprotected, unarmoured, rusted-out dune buggies rather than light-armoured vehicles?" Hill said later Friday outside the Commons.

In Kabul, Leslie acknowledged that an Iltis offers little protection to its occupants. "Quite frankly, there's almost none," the general said.

"If they had been in a tank they'd probably be alive today," Leslie said. "But they weren't and of course that's a tactical decision."

The dirt track had been checked within the past 24 hours and there was a reasonable assumption that the vehicle would not hit anything, he said. "We send the unprotected vehicles on routes that have been proved. We use the LAVs (light armoured vehicles) essentially where we want to make a show of force or on unproven routes."

Leslie said the tragedy has not changed operations in Kabul in the short term, adding that many Canadian patrols are on foot anyway.

"But are we going to review, once we find out what actually caused the explosion, what we can learn from this tragedy? Absolutely we are going to do this. I and my subordinates are going to sit down and try and determine every possible lesson learned."

The magnitude of the blast suggests the jeep was taken out by an anti-tank mine or its equivalent, designed to disable vehicles 17 tonnes or more. No light infantry vehicle in the 32-nation International Security Assistance Force could have withstood the impact.

Nor, apparently, could it have been prevented, short of not going there at all, and that, said Lt.-Col. Don Denne, the battle group commander, was not an option.

"It is a piece of ground where I needed to have some sort of a presence on what I consider to be on a daily basis," Denne said. "That's why that patrol was out there.
"Do we need to be there? You bet we do."

The dusty foothills track on which the soldiers were driving passed through territory commanders believe could be used as a rocket launch site for attacks on Kabul and the Canadian base, he said.

"Camp Julien (is) in the centre of an array of sensors, some of which are electronic, some of which are thermal, some of which are radar," said Leslie.

"The most reliable sensor in the world is a well-trained soldier with eyes on the ground. And that's what those soldiers were doing."

Canadian engineers in jeeps and armoured vehicles travelled the route taken by the ill-fated army patrol at least six times in the 24 hours leading up to the fatal explosion.

Members of 24 Field Squadron also monitored the area, talked to residents, consulted Soviet records and met with mine-clearing agencies in their attempts to gauge the state of the seven-kilometre track, the officer commanding the unit, Maj. Keith Cameron, said Friday.

Short, an experienced light engineer known as a pioneer, had walked the route earlier Thursday and the last engineering vehicle passed through two hours prior to the blast.

The so-called route-proving measures are not as thorough as an outright mine clearance, but have served the 1,950-member Canadian contingent well since they began operations here Aug. 22, as they have other missions.

"There's always a risk," said Cameron, a native of Petawawa, Ont. "We can never guarantee 100 per cent. We can't drive every square inch of the road.

"There is a residual risk that we can't get everything (and) certainly we cannot control what happens to any road after we've been there."

Outside the Commons Friday, the Defence Minister said that since at least one or two vehicles had passed along that road hours before the accident, it's unlikely the road wasn't properly cleared of mines.

"So we do not yet know whether it was because somebody placed a (explosive) device on the road or because the vehicle swerved or somehow went off the road," McCallum said. "But that matter is currently under investigation."

The engineers hope their forensic work can identify the source of the blast, when the device was planted and by whom.

"We will tell our soldiers exactly what happened. No secrets," Leslie promised.

"If there were things that were done wrong, we'll make sure they know about it and we'll correct them together. If there were unpleasant acts committed by unpleasant persons who have a desire to kill ISAF soldiers, the soldiers will know about it."

Dan Kelly of Newcastle, N.B., who has served as program director of the UN Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan for 4½ years, said Friday there are several known minefields in the area.

"That part of the city was one of the most heavily bombed and mined areas," Kelly said in an interview. "Some of the minefields go back to the Russian era, as well - '79 to '89 - and the Russian encampments there."

There is not a significant problem at the site of the Canadian camp, he said, but there are still many mines in the surrounding hills.

"I personally know of two anti-personnel minefields that are there that are under clearance now," said Kelly. "This was definitely bigger than an anti-personnel mine."

The blast left a crater no bigger than a beach ball, but the Para Company commander, Maj. John Vass, described a devastating scene as engineers in protective gear lay on their bellies and probed the area for other mines.

"The site was very disturbing - extremely surreal," he said Friday. "It was unbelievable. It looked like something that we would set up for an exercise but, of course, unfortunately this was not an exercise."

Vass of Kingston, Ont., said his soldiers were taking the loss hard, describing the mood as "solemn and filled with sadness."

He added, however, that his troops understand the nature of their work and the risks involved.

"We're pulling together as a team," he said. "We understand when we join the military that there is an inherent risk associated with the profession we've chosen and we also understand that the mission here does go on."

Estimates range between five and 11 million mines in Afghanistan, but Kelly said nobody really knows.

"What we do know is what the impact of mines and unexploded ordnance have on this country and that's 850 square kilometres of suspected mine area that Afghans cannot go back to," he said.

"The other major impact is on victims. It is confirmed today that there are over 100 mine and unexploded ordnance victims per month in Afghanistan - definitely, definitely the highest victim figure in the world today."

But getting better. In the mid-1990s, the figure was 300 victims per month.