The first Canadian casualties of the Afghanistan war were from an American pilot bombing a training exercise.
More than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served and 158 Canadian soldiers died during the Afghanistan mission. Thousands of other veterans of the war were wounded physically and psychologically, leading to additional deaths by suicide.
The first Canadian deaths in Afghanistan occurred in April, when four soldiers with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry were killed in an accidental, “friendly fire” bombing incident by a United States pilot.