Afghan authorities have announced the arrests of seven people in connection with a suicide car bombing that killed six NATO soldiers, including four colonels — three of them American and one Canadian.
Last week’s blast was the first in a series of major Taliban attacks against NATO targets — the insurgents’ apparent response to a planned NATO offensive in the south and peace overtures by the Afghan government.
Altogether, 18 people were killed in the blast on Tuesday last week near the destroyed Afghan royal palace, the deadliest attack against coalition forces in the Afghan capital in eight months. The car bombing was followed a day later by a ground assault against the US-run Bagram Air Field north of Kabul, and Saturday’s attack on the giant Kandahar Air Field, the biggest NATO base in southern Afghanistan.
Afghanistan intelligence service spokesman Saeed Ansari told reporters on Monday that the seven, including one schoolteacher, were taken into custody separately over the past week.
He did not say what specific roles the seven were suspected of playing in the attack and it was unclear what impact the arrests would have on Taliban operations in the capital, which is far more peaceful than many other parts of the country.
Ansari said the seven were under the command of the Taliban’s “shadow governor” of Kabul, Daoud Surkha, who the Afghans allege is hiding in Pakistan.
TERROR CELL
He said the cell was responsible for at least seven other attacks in the capital since last year, including the February assault against guesthouses frequented by foreigners in which six Indians were killed.
Previously Ansari said the February attack was carried out by the Pakistan-based insurgent group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India blames for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives.
“We are saying that they have been trained on the other side of the border, so it is clear that the intelligence service of our neighboring country has its role in the training and supporting of this terrorist group,” he said in a clear reference to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, which maintained close ties to the Taliban years ago.
Taliban fighters still use the lawless areas along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan as a sanctuary despite Pakistani military operations and US drone attacks.
In Islamabad, Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit called the allegation of involvement by his country’s intelligence service “all baseless and groundless.”
“We are committed that our soil is not used for terrorist actions anywhere in the world and we hope others are committed to that also,” Basit said.
REVENGE
The recent attacks in Kabul and against the bases appeared to be the Taliban’s response to NATO’s plans for a major operation in the coming weeks in the Taliban southern stronghold of Kandahar — and an attempt at demonstrating that the insurgents are capable of pressuring the coalition in several parts of the country.
Sixteen insurgents and one US contractor were killed in the Bagram attack. NATO says a number of coalition soldiers were wounded in the Kandahar attack but gave no precise figures.
In the latest fighting, the Canadian Ministry of Defense announced that a 26-year-old Canadian soldier was killed on Monday by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan.
Recent insurgent assaults also seemed to be a rebuff to Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s plans to offer peace to militants willing to give up the fight. Karzai plans to roll out a program of jobs, training and financial help to insurgents willing to give up during a national conference, or peace jirga, set for Wednesday next week.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS