US-led coalition and Afghan troops conducting a nighttime raid killed a Taliban leader yesterday but also two children caught in the crossfire, a US spokesman said.
In the south, Taliban fighters ambushed a police patrol over the weekend, and the subsequent battle left six police and 12 militants dead, said Kandahar provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqib.
During the raid of the home in eastern Paktia Province, suspected militants fired guns and rocket-propelled grenades at the coalition and Afghan troops, forcing the soldiers to return fire. Two children were killed in the exchange, said Major Donald Korpi, a US spokesman.
"When someone shoots at you with an RPG, you're going to return fire," Korpi said. "It's very sad and we hate to see any civilian killed, especially a child ... We had no indication whatsoever there were kids in there."
The midlevel leader killed in the raid was identified as Commander Saleem, whom the US accused of having attacked Afghan and foreign troops. A woman inside Saleem's house was also wounded in the crossfire and evacuated for treatment, the coalition said.
Civilian deaths in Afghanistan has been a recurring theme this year. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly asked international forces to do all they can to avoid such deaths, and US and NATO commanders say they frequently withhold fire if they think their attack will cause civilian casualties, but that they reserve the right to defend themselves.
In Kandahar Province, Taliban fighters ambushed police traveling in between Ghorak and Mawiwand on Saturday, sparking a six-hour battle, Saqib said. About 20 Taliban fighters were wounded in the engagement, he said, and several police are missing.
Saqib said "a large number" of Taliban launched the attack, but he didn't give numbers.
Elsewhere in Kandahar Province, Taliban fighters beheaded two civilians they accused of being spies for the government or NATO, Saqib said.
In the east, insurgents fired mortars at a village in Kunar Province, killing a boy and wounding eight other people, including five NATO soldiers, a NATO statement said yesterday.
The 10-year-old boy died after two mortar rounds hit a village in Nari district on Saturday, the statement said.
The attack also left five alliance soldiers and three Afghan civilians wounded, it said.
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
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
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS