Cpl. Nathan Hornburg Tribute

By Dene Moore, The Canadian Press

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Another Canadian soldier has been killed in fighting with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

Cpl. Nathan Hornburg, 24, a mechanic with the King's Own Calgary Regiment, was fixing the track on a Leopard tank when he was killed in a mortar attack around 5 p.m. local time Monday, military officials said.

A second soldier was wounded in the mortar attack.

Three other soldiers were injured by a rocket-propelled grenade in an ensuring firefight with the rebels, officials said.

All four of the injured were evacuated to the hospital at Kandahar Air Field, where a military spokesman described their injuries as "not life threatening."

Details of the firefight during Operation Honest Soldier in the Panjwaii district west of Kandahar city were withheld until Tuesday while Hornburg's family was notified of his death.

"These incidents are extremely difficult and trying times for the families, friends and colleagues of Cpl. Hornburg," Brig-Gen. Guy Laroche, Canada's top military official in Kandahar, told reporters at Kandahar Air Field.

"There is no way to comfort those who are grieving today except to say that Cpl. Hornburg was involved in a mission he believed in."

"Cpl. Hornburg had to dismount in order to put the track back on a Leopard tank and it's at this moment that the mortar shell happened," Laroche said.