Bodies found beheaded in Afghanistan; 4 troops die

Sat Jun 26, 2010, 12:00 am ET

KABUL, Afghanistan –

Four American troops were reported killed and the bodies of 11 Afghan men, some beheaded, were found in rising violence across Afghanistan.

Mohammad Khan, deputy police chief in Uruzgan province, said a villager in the Bagh Char area of Khas Uruzgan district spotted the bodies Friday in a field and called police.

"They were killed because the Taliban said they were spying for the government, working for the government," he said.

The acting Uruzgan governor, Khudia Rahim, said five or six of the 11 victims had been beheaded.

NATO reported two U.S. service members were killed in (Taliban fighers') insurgent attacks Friday in eastern Afghanistan, one American died Friday in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan, and a fourth U.S. troop died in a roadside bombing Thursday in southern Afghanistan.

Their deaths brought to 84 the number of international service members killed so far in June, which is already the deadliest month of the nearly nine-year-old war. At least 50 were Americans.

Also in the south, a joint force of Afghan and international troops killed a midlevel Taliban commander and other insurgents Thursday who were planting a roadside bomb near the provincial capital of Kandahar province, NATO said. Some of the insurgents were killed by a coalition airstrike, NATO said.

It said the Taliban commander, Faizullah, was responsible for roadside bomb attacks in the Arghandab district of Kandahar and is believed to have killed at least one coalition soldier in March.

The coalition is ramping up security in and around Kandahar, the largest city in the south, in an effort to drive out insurgents and bring the area under the control of the central Afghan government in Kabul.

In Khost province, another joint force captured an alleged operative of the Haqqani network, an al-Qaida-linked arm of the Taliban. Afghan and international forces have been involved in intense engagements with the Haqqani network along the border of Khost and Paktia provinces. Several insurgent commanders have been killed during operations, NATO said.

Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

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Blast shakes Kabul as US military chief visits

by Patrick Falby Patrick Falby –

June 26, 2010

KABUL (AFP) –

The Afghan capital was rocked Saturday by an accidental blast as Washington's military chief promised business as usual despite the sacking of the US commander of foreign forces.

The blast, near the foreign ministry in Kabul's embassy district, happened when an anti-personnel mine in an Afghan army vehicle accidentally detonated, a spokesman for NATO forces said.

It was not an attack by Taliban-linked insurgents, Lieutenant-Commander Ian Baxter told AFP of the blast, which happened around 9:55 am (0525 GMT).

NATO said Saturday it had killed a Taliban commander involved in making and deploying IEDs in Logar province, just south of Kabul.

Ghulam Sakhi was disguised in woman's clothes when he was killed late Friday by Afghan and international forces trying to capture him, NATO said.

Afghan and NATO forces also killed several (Taliban fighters, referred to by NATO media as insurgents or militants) in an air strike Friday night in the southern province of Zabul, the alliance said, adding that steps were taken to protect civilians before the air strike.

McChrystal won early praise for a drop in civilian casualties as he attempted to win popular trust, at the same time working hard to bring Karzai on board.

There are 140,000 troops in Afghanistan, with the number set to peak at 150,000 by August in the hope of forcing an end to the insurgency by ramping up efforts in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban's heartland.

Obama said in Washington that Petraeus, well regarded for his role in turning around the Iraq war, would be able to hit the ground running due to his work on Afghanistan as head of Central Command, which oversees both war zones.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday that he wanted troops home from Afghanistan before the next British general elections, due by 2015.

"We can't be there for another five years, having been there for nine years already," Cameron, who took office last month, told Sky News television, on the sidelines of a Group of Eight summit.