A resurgent al-Qaeda terror network has teamed up with Taliban militants in Afghanistan to unleash a wave of attacks which have killed about 600 people this year, a senior government minister said on Saturday.
Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said al-Qaeda was regrouping and using unspecified "new tactics" in the attacks apparently aimed at destabilizing Afghanistan ahead of September's parliamentary polls.
"There are reports that al-Qaeda are regrouping, they have changed their tactics and have once again focused on Afghanistan," Wardak told reporters.
He said there was evidence that al-Qaeda was coordinating Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami militants attacks, which have spiked in recent months.
"We did expect that with the beginning of spring and summer, when the snow melts, there would be increased security incidents and operations, but it has increased more than what we expected," he said.
"There is evidence that confirms coordination among" the militant groups, the defense minister said ahead of a national security conference.
Wardak has warned earlier of al-Qaeda regrouping in Afghanistan and his views are echoed by security analysts such as Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's "bin Laden unit," referring to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Since the start of the year, attacks committed by Taliban militants have resulted in nearly 600 deaths, mostly among militants, as opposed to 850 deaths in similar attacks for all of last year, according to an AFP tally.
The US military has also suffered heavier casualties, highlighted by the downing of the Chinook helicopter in northeast Afghanistan last month that killed 16 US forces. The Taliban claimed to have shot the helicopter down.
A US-led offensive drove the fundamentalist Taliban from power in late 2001 for harboring bin Laden after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the US.
Some 18,000 coalition troops are still in Afghanistan, and the US military and UN officials are frequently targeted by landmine attacks and roadside bombs.
Afghanistan has increasingly blamed neighboring Pakistan for failing to stem the attacks and Wardak disputed Islamabad's comments that bin Laden, his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar are hiding in the country's troubled south.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
RSS