Seven people died, including two children, when US-led forces tried to detain a suspected Taliban militant in a village near the Pakistani border, the military said yesterday.
The battle broke out Tuesday when soldiers from the US-led coalition went to the village in southeastern Paktika province in search of Raz Mohammed, who the military said was implicated in attacks against its troops.
"Coalition troops were fired on by Raz Mohammed and other Taliban forces when they attempted to capture Mohammed," the military said in a statement. "During the ensuing firefight, Mohammed and two other enemy insurgents were killed. An Afghan woman and two children also died."
PHOTO: AFP
An Afghan helping the coalition troops also was killed, it said. It was unclear if he was a member of the Afghan security forces or an informer.
Another child and a second Afghan working with the coalition were wounded, the statement said. The child was reported in stable condition.
Mullah Hakim Latifi, a purported Taliban spokesman, said the clash occurred Wednesday afternoon when US troops surrounded the tents where Mohammed was living in Waza Khwa, an impoverished district on the Pakistani border.
"Mohammed resisted the US forces," Latifi said by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.
He confirmed the death of Mohammed, who he said was a senior military commander in eastern Laghman province before the Taliban's ouster in 2001 and said his wife and six of his children were also killed.
Latifi claimed that eight US soldiers had perished in the battle, but the US military said none of its soldiers were hurt.
Paktika lies in a swath of Afghan territory along the mountainous Pakistani frontier where a stubborn insurgency has exposed the feeble reach of the government of US-backed President Hamid Karzai and hampered reconstruction.
Taliban leaders have threatened a fresh offensive as the harsh Afghan winter wanes, but commanders of the 18,000 overwhelmingly US combat troops in Afghanistan and the separate 8,500-strong NATO security force insist the rebels are weakening.
News of the Paktika clash came a day after the US military said its aircraft killed five suspected Taliban militants near the border in Khost province and also that US-led troops had shot an Afghan boy during a search operation.
The boy died Wednesday when troops fired toward a suspected bomb-builder and two armed men in a village near Asadabad in eastern Kunar province, the military said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS