Prime Minister Anthony Albanese honoured more than 35,000 Australians who served in Afghanistan and wider Middle East operations during a 25th anniversary service at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
“In New York, fires were still burning at Ground Zero from the September 11 attacks a month earlier. The world felt upended,” Albanese said of the start of Operation Slipper. “Yet Australia did what is so resolutely in our nature. We went to support our friend and ally” (The Guardian).
The ceremony was attended by 1,400 veterans, military personnel and politicians on Sunday, along with alleged war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith, who faces five charges of war crime murder over the alleged executions of Afghan detainees (SMH).
Forty-seven Australian personnel died in Afghanistan and 263 were wounded, while thousands more allied soldiers perished. An estimated tens of thousands of civilians were also killed during the war (The Guardian).