Taliban militants have attacked a police base in southern Afghanistan with a car bomb, rockets and machine-gun fire, killing three NATO soldiers and five civilians, officials said yesterday.
The brazen attack followed the killing of three British troops by a rogue Afghan soldier, an incident that has underscored concerns over efforts to build up the local army, a cornerstone of the US-led war strategy.
Rebels set off an explosives-laden car before firing rockets and small arms on the police base in the southern province of Kandahar on Tuesday evening.
Afghan police backed by international forces fought back “and prevented insurgents from penetrating the compound perimeter,” NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
ISAF did not reveal the nationalities of the troops, whose deaths bring to at least 360 the number of NATO fatalities in the conflict so far this year.
Zalmai Ayoubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar government, said the car bomb was set off by a suicide bomber, adding that several other insurgents attacked the base with rockets and machine-gun fire for more than 20 minutes.
The incident came on the heels of the killing on Tuesday by a renegade soldier of three members of a British Gurkha battalion on a base in the neighboring province of Helmand, one of the most restive areas in the country.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan army chief have vowed a full investigation.
Britain, the main US ally in the war against the Taliban, said it would not alter its strategy in working with local forces, which is key in enabling them to take over security and allow for an eventual exit for US-led troops.
“The most important thing is that we are going to stay shoulder-to-shoulder with our Afghan partners,” ISAF spokesman US Lieutenant Colonol John Dorrian said.
“It is an horrific event and we will bring those responsible to justice,” he said.
“In the meantime we are going to continue to partner with the Afghan national security forces — we have a common enemy and we are going to keep going,” he added.
Officials of NATO’s Training Mission-Afghanistan — costing more than US$10 billion, mostly from US coffers — say they aimed to recruit and train 171,000 soldiers and 134,000 police officers.
Current figures are around 115,000 in the army and 104,000 in the police. Illiteracy, desertion and drug addiction are widespread problems.
“It’s a game of patience,” a Western military official said.
Afghanistan’s ability to take over responsibility for securing its borders and quelling insurgency is seen as vital to Western plans to end engagement in a war NATO and its allies have been fighting since 2001.
“There is no alternative to training a strong Afghan army and security force which can replace foreign troops in the long run,” political analyst Mohammad Younus Fakur said.
“The enemy will try to use this [attacks on Western military] as a permanent tactic to create mistrust among forces who fight alongside each other, and that could be disastrous for the friendly forces,” he said.
There have been fears that as the war loses ground with the Western public, pressure to reach quotas will override quality.
British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed his troops would not change the way they work with the local military despite the attack.
Britain has about 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and Cameron has signalled he would like to see combat troops withdraw within five years.
The US and NATO have 143,000 troops in Afghanistan, with the number due to rise to 150,000 in coming weeks as international forces step up their campaign against the Taliban.
Military officials said the three dead soldiers were from a Gurkha battalion, whose troops are drawn from Nepal, but have not given details on their nationalities. Several more were also wounded in the attack.
US General David Petraeus, who assumed command of NATO troops this month, said it was vital to ensure that the trust between Afghan and international forces “remains solid in order to defeat our common enemies.”
‘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