Valitsus -- Estonia accepts with great sadness the news of the deaths of Master Sergeant Eerik Salmus and Sergeant Raivis Kang. The members of the Estonian Defence Forces fell in battle while defending the freedom and security of Afghanistan and Estonia. The members of the Defence Forces who lost their lives were sons, partners, brothers and good friends to those closest to them—in this tragic moment, the whole of the Estonian nation stands in mourning with you.

The fallen men were sappers, whose daily job was to combat various explosives that primarily threaten the lives and health of local residents. The sustaining of previous injuries in combat or mission difficulties did not lessen their wish to once again return to Afghanistan this summer with their fellow servicemen.

Baltic Times -- TALLINN- Master Sergeant Allain Tikko, a thirty-year-old Estonian soldier serving in Afghanistan was killed in an attack on June 15.


“I bow my head in deep mourning in memory of Allain Tikko, an Estonian soldier that has fallen in battle,” President Toomas Hendrik Ilves wrote to the family of Tikko.


“Warrant Officer Allain Tikko, who previously served on three foreign missions, was a professional and brave soldier, a reliable comrade-in-arms for his fellow soldiers. It is unfair and disconsolately painful that we now remember him with thoughts of bereavement,” President Ilves wrote.

Canadian Press -- TALLINN, Estonia — Estonia's military says one of its soldiers has died in southern Afghanistan after being injured while unloading equipment from a truck.

The military said today that 30-year-old Sgt. Maj Ivar Brok died in a military hospital in Kandahar overnight after a spare wheel of a heavy armoured vehicle rolled over him at the British Camp Bastion.

Brok is the third Estonian soldier to die in Afghanistan since the small Baltic country joined the NATO-led coalition in 2003.

  Two Estonian soldiers were killed in a missile attack in Afghanistan, an event Foreign Minister Urmas Paet characterized as the cost of bearing Estonia’s own security.
The two soldiers, members of a mine clearance team in the Helmand province, were attacked with a 107 mm missile during their lunch break on June 23.

Four other soldiers were injured in the same attack – two of them seriously – and remain under medical care.
Sgt. Kalle Torn, 24, assistant to the commander of the mine disposal team, and Jr. Sgt. Jako Karuks, 33, the driver of the team, were named as the deceased.