Gunmen shot dead a road worker subcontracted to a US project in southern Afghanistan yesterday, police said, while coalition troops killed eight attackers in separate incidents.
Three other road builders were wounded when their vehicle came under fire in southern Zabul Province as they were driving to work, the provincial police chief said.
He blamed the attack on "enemies of Afghanistan" -- a term used by the government to refer to remnants of the Taliban regime toppled from power in 2001 and now waging a deadly insurgency.
The Taliban has often warned Afghans against working for US and other firms trying to rebuild war-ravaged Afghanistan and has already killed scores of locals with foreign employers as part of a guerrilla-style campaign.
In southern Helmand Province on Tuesday, coalition forces were attacked by a band of rebels in the southernmost district of Garmser, the main town of which was captured by the rebels for two days nearly two weeks ago.
Coalition forces killed seven "extremists" in the return fire, it said in a statement.
On Tuesday, US officials said more than 600 suspected Taliban fighters have been killed over the past month, the bloodiest period in southern Afghanistan since their regime was overthrown five years ago.
The Taliban fighters were the targets of Operation Mountain Thrust, a US-led offensive designed to flush out as many Taliban militants as possible before NATO takes over responsibility for stabilising the southern provinces at the end of this month.
The number of Taliban dead was given by Colonel Tom Collins, a spokesman for the US-led multinational coalition. It is also estimated that more than 1,700 people have been killed since the start of the year. They include civilians, aid workers, Afghan forces and more than 70 foreign troops.
British and NATO officials recently put the number of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan at between 1,000 and 2,000, with others able freely to cross the Afghan-Pakistani border.
UK commanders -- in charge of more than 3,000 British troops deployed in southern Helmand Province -- have expressed surprise at what they have called the "virulence" of Taliban fighters.
Publicly, they have made a virtue out of the Taliban's aggression by saying they have confronted and killed more extremists, and more quickly, than they expected. However, this has made British forward bases vulnerable and has left troops over-extended.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion