Two Afghan guards were killed yesterday when suicide bombers and attackers besieged the office of a logistics company working with foreign forces, near the NATO-led force’s western headquarters.
Western troops were deployed to quash the attack at the offices of Monaco-based international firm ES-KO on the outskirts of Herat city, where NATO soldiers passed control to Afghan forces four months ago.
It happened a few hundred meters from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in western Afghanistan, which is Italian-led, and Herat’s airport.
The attack raises questions about security in the relatively peaceful province, handed over in July as part of plans for the 140,000 mainly US foreign troops to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
However, in Brussels yesterday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted its mission in Afghanistan was “moving in the right direction” despite a string of headline-grabbing “spectacular” attacks in recent weeks.
These included a car bomb on Saturday which killed 17 people, including 13 foreigners, in the deadliest single attack on NATO in Kabul in 10 years of war.
One foreign soldier was among five people injured in the latest attack, according to Herat governor’s spokesman Mohayddin Noori.
A reporter saw a wounded Italian soldier being walked away from the scene, but a spokesman for the NATO-led ISAF could not confirm any injuries to its personnel.
Officials said that the attack happened when two suicide bombers detonated a car bomb at the gates of the office, allowing three accomplices to get inside.
“Five attackers were killed along with two guards working for ES-KO company,” Noori told a press conference after the attack finished.
“Five people — one policeman, one ISAF soldier and one intelligence officer along with two other guards of the company — were wounded in today’s attack,” Noori said.
The Taliban, leaders of the decade--long insurgency in Afghanistan since the late 2001 US-led invasion ousted them from power, were not immediately reachable for comment on the attack.
The killings came the day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a regional conference in Istanbul that there was no hope for peace in Afghanistan without help from neighbors such as Pakistan, where insurgents have rear bases.
The ISAF spokesman in western Afghanistan, who declined to be quoted by name, said it had provided ground and air support to yesterday’s operation, which took place outside the compound of Regional Command West.
Noori said that ISAF helicopters had been scrambled.
Noor Khan Nekzad, a regional police spokesman, said foreign forces killed the insurgents, but the ISAF spokesman could not confirm this.
One witness, who did not give his name, said he saw several wounded people evacuated after two men with guns and rocket-propelled grenades ran into the office and opened fire.
Attacks on contractors working with ISAF happen relatively frequently in Afghanistan.
ES-KO works at a number of locations throughout Afghanistan and its recent projects have included extending the runway at Herat airport.
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,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
RSS