A NATO and Afghan operation to retake a Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan has killed at least 12 Taliban fighters and two children, the Afghan Defense Ministry said.
In other violence in southern Afghanistan, a NATO soldier was killed and another wounded in an explosion on Saturday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. ISAF did not give any further details about the nationalities of the casualties or the exact location of the incident.
Taliban militants overran Musa Qala in February, four months after British troops left the town following a contentious peace agreement that gave security responsibilities to Afghan elders. Taliban fighters have been in control of the town ever since.
A string of battles around Musa Qala in recent months have signaled a renewed focus by US forces to take on the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan's poppy-growing south. Saturday's violence was the latest in a series of deadly engagements in Helmand Province -- the world's largest opium poppy-growing region and the front line of Afghanistan's bloodiest fighting this year.
Defense Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said elders in the area had asked the Taliban to leave, but when they refused, the elders sought help from government troops.
"For some period of time, Musa Qala has become a base for terrorists. Hundreds of foreign terrorists have gathered there," he said on Saturday.
Twelve Taliban have been killed in fighting since the operation began on Friday afternoon. Separately, two children were killed when security forces clashed with Taliban traveling in a convoy with civilians, Azimi said.
"The enemy always tries to use human shields ... and our demand from them is that they stop putting civilian lives in danger," Azimi said.
Next to Musa Qala, in Sangin district, Taliban militants hanged a 12-year-old boy in an orchard, allegedly because the boy gave information to the Afghan government and international forces, said the provincial police chief, Mohammad Hussein Andiwal.
US-led coalition forces, meanwhile, conducted airstrikes in an operation targeting a Taliban commander believed to be responsible for attacks against security forces and involvement in weapons and drug trafficking, the coalition said. The US-led forces bombarded the compound where he was hiding with several militants on Friday in Musa Qala district.
The building was destroyed and "several militants" were killed, coalition forces said. "Multiple secondary explosions were also reported, indicating the presence of a sizable weapons cache."
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