Australia sends extra 240 troops to Afghanistan-PM

CANBERRA, May 8 (Reuters) Australia will send an extra 240 troops to Afghanistan in July to work alongside Dutch soldiers as part of expanded NATO peacekeeping and reconstruction operations, Prime Minister John Howard today said.

The new deployment will take to more than 500 the number of Australian troops in Afghanistan.

''They will work on reconstruction and community-based projects as part of Australia's commitment to securing a stable and democratic future for Afghanistan,'' Howard said.

The government foreshadowed in February that it would send a reconstruction team to Afghanistan, but the exact size of the deployment was unknown.

NATO is expanding its peacekeeping operations to allow the larger US-led coalition to reduce its troop numbers to 16,500 from 19,000 and focus on hunting the former ruling Taliban and al Qaeda remnants seen as behind an insurgency.

The Taliban and their militant allies have intensified their campaign against foreign troops and Afghanistan's government in recent months with a wave of roadside and suicide bombings, attacks and assassinations.

Thirty foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, 23 of them Americans.

Australia sent 1,550 troops to Afghanistan in 2001, including special forces, to join the US-led strikes that toppled the Taliban for harbouring the al Qaeda network, blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Australia's only fatality in Afghanistan came in February 2002 when a soldier was killed after his vehicle hit a landmine.

Australia also has troops deployed in Iraq, the Middle East, Sudan and the Solomon Islands.

REUTERS OM ND0940