Suicide attack kills four Afghan policemen

Monday, August 09, 2010

HERAT:

A suicide attacker struck a police convoy in the western Afghan city of Herat on Sunday killing four policemen, while a second bomb blast hit a police convoy in southern Kandahar, officials said. The suicide car bomb hit on the road to Herat’s airport, said deputy provincial police chief Delawar Shah Delawar.

“Four policemen were martyred and another officer was wounded,” said Ziaudin Mahmmodi, deputy police chief for western Afghanistan. He said a female police officer was among the dead. Eyewitnesses said that the bomber drove his explosives-laden car into the police convoy.

Two fuel tankers were alight at the scene, along with a damaged police pick-up truck. In Kandahar city, explosives fixed to a parked motorcycle detonated as a prison police convoy passed, injuring one policeman, said Fazel Ahmad Shairzad, deputy provincial police chief. afp

Three US-led soldiers die in Afghanistan

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:41:34 GMT

Two roadside bombs have claimed the lives of three US-led soldiers in southern Afghanistan, amid ever-increasing attacks against foreign troops in the war-stricken country.

NATO`s International Security Assistance Force declared the latest death toll on Sunday.

The US-led military alliance, however, did not disclose the nationality of the soldiers and the exact location of the incidents.

The latest upsurge of violence against foreign troops comes as July set the record as the deadliest month for American forces stationed in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001.

The latest fatalities bring the overall number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 425.

Earlier on Saturday, five US-led troops including two Danish soldiers were killed in the southern Helmand province where their tank was detonated by a roadside bomb.

The rising number of casualties has dramatically slashed public support for the Afghan war across Europe and the US.

As the number of casualties among US-led troops mounts in Afghanistan, so does the public outcry over the prolonged war in the war-hit country where over 1,300 civilians have been killed so far this year, according to Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.

Civilians have been the main victims of violence in Afghanistan, particularly in the country's troubled southern and eastern provinces, where they are killed by both militant and foreign fire.

HA/MGH

Afghan inmate kills two US soldiers

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 18:12:42 GMT

An Afghan inmate has gone on a shooting spree killing two US marines and wounded three others at a prison in Afghanistan's volatile south.

The incident took place at the heartland of Taliban in Musa Qala district of Helmand Province, informed sources told a Press TV correspondent on Sunday.

Two prisoners and the gunman also died in the incident but the circumstances of their killing remains unclear.

Sources say the gunman had either smuggled in the weapon or snatched it from an Afghan guard on duty.

In similar cases over the past few months Afghan army recruits have killed several US and British troops at training camps. Analysts believe such incidents indicate Afghan dissatisfaction with the foreign presence in the country.

Foreign forces are experiencing some of their deadliest days in Afghanistan since the start of the US-led invasion of the country nine years ago.

According to official NATO tally almost 2,000 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan so far.

This is while Afghanistan's official Baakhtar news agency said in a recent report that the US-led war has claimed the lives of nearly 4,500 foreign soldiers since 2001.

The rising number of casualties has drastically decreased public support for the Afghan war across Europe and the US.

JR/MMN

US slams murders of medics in Afghanistan

by Claire Truscott Claire Truscott –

August 8, 2010

KABUL (AFP) –

The United States has condemned the "despicable" murders of eight foreign medics mown down in a forest attack claimed by the Taliban, including a British woman who was about to return home to get married.

The bullet-riddled bodies of five US men and three women -- an American, a German and a Briton -- were found in the northeastern province of Badakhshan on Friday. Two Afghans were also killed and one, the group's driver, survived.

The volunteer medics worked for the Christian aid group International Assistance Mission but US officials and the family of the British doctor, Karen Woo, denied Taliban claims that they were proselyitsers and spies.

"The Taliban has proudly claimed responsibility for this despicable act of wanton violence," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement Sunday.

"We are heartbroken by the loss of these heroic, generous people," she said.

"We also condemn the Taliban's transparent attempt to justify the unjustifiable by making false accusations about their activities in Afghanistan."

Despite a Taliban claim of responsibility and another from the militant group Hizb-e-Islami, Afghan officials have said their investigation continues and added common robbers may have been to blame.

"At this stage it is premature to say who has carried out the attack, who they are affiliated with or what their motives were," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the execution-style killings were a "deplorable and cowardly act".

One of the murdered Americans was identified as Tom Little, an optometrist who had lived in Afghanistan since the mid-1970s and raised his family in Kabul through years of civil war and Taliban rule.

Abdullah Abdullah, a former presidential candidate who trained as an eye surgeon with Little, said the foreign medics were bringing desperately needed healthcare to war-torn and impoverished Afghanistan.

Dismissing the Taliban's claims as "ridiculous", Abdullah told the BBC: "These were dedicated people. Tom Little used to work in Afghanistan with his heart -- he dedicated half of his life to service the people of Afghanistan.

"To hear that he was killed... in such a brutal manner -- I couldn't believe it," he said.

Badakhshan police chief Aqa Noor Kintoz said the group were lined up and shot in woodland and had all their belongings stolen, citing testimony from the driver, who survived after apparently reciting Koranic verses to the gunmen.

Northeast Afghanistan has been regarded as largely free of the Taliban-led insurgency blighting other parts of the country.

NATO and the United States have close to 150,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of a major build-up designed to reverse Taliban momentum and quicken an end to the militia's nearly nine-year insurgency.

Woo, 36, had quit a job with a private healthcare firm in London to come to Afghanistan, and on her blog had written with passion about her voluntary work and day-to-day life in the shattered country.

"Her motivation was purely humanitarian. She was a humanist and had no religious or political agenda," Woo's family said in a statement late Sunday.

"She wanted the world to know there was more than a war going on in Afghanistan, that people were not getting their basic needs met."

According to British media reports, Woo was preparing to return to London to marry her fiance in two weeks.

"She went to one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan just to help people," her husband-to-be, former British army officer Mark Smith, told the BBC.

"That was the sort of girl she was. She was focused and professional," he said.