Fierce fighting between Taliban rebels and Afghan security forces left 18 insurgents and three others dead, a day after the US military pounded suspected rebels in airstrikes that killed as many as 20, officials said yesterday.
Three US troops were slightly wounded when a bomb exploded near their armored Humvee in Paktia Province on Sunday, said US military spokesman Colonel James Yonts.
A Taliban spokesman, meanwhile, claimed his fighters had assassinated a kidnapped police chief and five of his men for collaborating with the US-led coalition.
Eleven rebels were killed in an hour-long firefight before dawn yesterday after attacking a government office in the Washer district of Helmand Province, said Haji Mohammed Wali, a spokesman for the governor. The district government chief and an Afghan soldier also died.
Seven more rebels were killed late on Sunday and early yesterday after they attacked a police checkpost on a stretch of the Kabul-Kandahar highway that runs through southern Zabul Province, said Zabul's deputy police chief, Bari Gul. A policeman manning the post was also killed.
Three months of bloodshed across the south and east has left hundreds dead and sparked fears that the war is widening, rather than winding down. US and Afghan officials warn things could get worse ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for September.
About 280 suspected rebels and 29 US troops have been killed since March, according to Afghan and US officials. More than three dozen Afghan police and soldiers also have died, as have more than 100 civilians.
Yonts warned that foreign militants backed up by networks channeling them money and arms had come into Afghanistan to try to subvert legislative elections in September. He said that for "operational security reasons" he could not identify the networks or who was backing them.
Afghan Defense Minister Rahim Wardak said last week that intelligence indicated al-Qaeda had slipped at least have a dozen foreign agents into the country, two of whom had already detonated themselves in suicide attacks
On Sunday US aircraft opened fire on a group of suspected Taliban along a narrow footpath in the high mountains northwest of Gereshk, Helmand Province, after rebels had pinned down a coalition ground patrol with rocket and small-arms fire.
"Initial battle-damage assessments indicate 15 to 20 enemies died and an enemy vehicle was destroyed," the US Army said in a statement on Sunday.
Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jerry O'Hara added a warning to the insurgents.
"When these criminals engage coalition forces, they do so at considerable risk," he said. "We are not going to let up on them."
O'Hara said that additional US and Afghan forces had been sent to the scene and the numbers of rebel dead could rise.
Elsewhere in Helmand Province on Sunday, gunmen shot to death three men -- a judge, an intelligence worker and an employee of the provincial education department, Wali said.
He said it was not clear whether the Taliban or some other armed group was behind the Saturday night attack.
And in Kandahar, rebels fired three rockets into the city center early on Sunday, jolting residents but causing no casualties.
Purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Latif Hakimi claimed responsibility for the ambush of a police convoy in the south last week and said insurgents had killed a district police chief and five of his men after taking them captive.
He often calls news organizations to claim responsibility for attacks on behalf of the Taliban. His information has sometimes proven untrue or exaggerated and his link to the group's leadership is unclear.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS