US-led strike kills four Afghan civilians

Press TV, Sunday, October 24, 2010, 4:22PM

US-led forces during an air patrol in Afghanistan Amid growing discontent over the rising number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, a US-led airstrike has resulted in the death of four more civilians the country.

Local witnesses say at least four people, including an Afghan child, were killed in the US-led airstrike in the central province of Wardak.

The incident comes as two Afghan students were killed at the hands of American troops on Saturday in the region.

Afghan officials have repeatedly demanded a halt to the attacks. Civilian casualties caused by NATO attacks have been a major source of tension between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the US-led foreign forces in the country.

The attacks have killed large numbers of civilians since the 2001US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of the country.

Hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in the US-led airstrikes and ground operations in different parts of the war-ravaged country over the past months.

A large number of civilians have fallen victim to the air raids since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The loss of civilian lives at the hand of foreign forces has dramatically increased anti-American sentiments in Afghanistan.

JR/PKH/MMN

NATO soldier killed in Afghanistan

Sunday, October 24, 2010, 6:54 am ET

KABUL (AFP) –

A soldier with NATO forces (ISAF) was killed Sunday in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said.

ISAF did not identify the soldier, following its usual policy.

The soldier was killed in an improvised explosive device (IED) blast, it said in a statement.

The homemade bombs produced from cheap material are responsible for many of the NATO and Afghan troops' casualties.

The death brings to 599 the number of foreign soldiers who have died in the Afghan war this year, according to an AFP tally based on one kept by the icasualties.org website.

The United States and NATO have more than 150,000 soldiers in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban-led insurgency (resistance), which is at its most intense in the southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

International and Afghan forces are currently engaged in a major offensive around Kandahar city -- capital of the province of the same name -- aimed at pushing the insurgents out of the area to bring an end to the long war.

Suicide attackers assault UN office in Afghanistan

By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer –

Saturday, October 23, 2010, 5:10 pm ET

KABUL, Afghanistan –

 A suicide car bomber and three armed Taliban fighters (AP refers to Taliban fighters as militants and insurgents) wearing explosives vests and dressed as women attacked a United Nations compound Saturday in western Afghanistan, but Afghan security forces killed the attackers and no U.N. employees were harmed, officials said.

The brazen attack began when four militants drove up to the U.N. compound in a car laden with explosives and fired a rocket toward the entrance, said Dilawar Shah Dilawar, deputy police chief of Herat province.

The militants tried unsuccessfully to blow up the gate with the rocket so they could drive the car inside the compound, he said. When that didn't work, three of the militants got out of the car and the fourth blew up the vehicle, killing himself. The explosion destroyed the gate, allowing the three to get inside.

"The three attackers were wearing police uniforms covered with burqas," Dilawar said, referring to the long, flowing garment that many Afghan women wear in public. "All of them had suicide vests and AK-47s."

Militants sometimes wear burqas or police uniforms as a disguise. The Interior Ministry denied the attackers were wearing police uniforms.

Guards at the U.N. compound and Afghan policemen who responded to the site engaged in sporadic gun fights with the three attackers, who were killed by Afghan security forces. NATO forces also responded, a statement by the U.N. said. Two Afghan guards were wounded.

"The attack did not disrupt the United Nations activities and no United Nations personnel was injured," the statement said. It said the U.N. will continue its work in Herat.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the assault, and said the United Nations is conducting a full investigation, a spokesperson for Ban said in a separate statement.

The attack was similar to one in July in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan where Taliban suicide attackers used a car to blow a hole in the wall of a compound of a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Five men wearing suicide bomb vests then poured into the compound and fought a five-hour gunbattle with Afghan security forces before being killed. A Briton, a German and two Afghans were killed in the attack.

In October 2009, Taliban fighters attacked a guesthouse used by United Nations workers in central Kabul. Eight people were killed, including five foreigners working for the U.N.

Separately, NATO forces killed two civilians, including a teenage boy, during a fight with insurgents Saturday in Wardak province in eastern Afghanistan, according to Mohammad Halim Fidai, the governor of the province. The deaths prompted hundreds of residents to stage a demonstration that blocked a highway for nearly an hour.

The coalition could not confirm the two deaths. NATO said that after insurgents attacked a patrol with a homemade bomb, the troops stopped to investigate the explosion. After they stopped, they received fire from an unknown number of insurgents, the coalition said. During the fighting, the coalition said two Afghans fell off a motorcycle and were taken away by villagers so their conditions could not be verified.

Also in the east, U.S. special forces, NATO troops and the Afghan army killed more than 10 insurgents (Taliban fighters) and recovered four weapons caches during a four-day operation that ended Wednesday in Dara-i-Pech district of Kunar province, NATO said Saturday.

In southern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up before reaching a checkpoint in Kandahar, killing two civilians and wounding two others, said police chief Sardar Mohammad Zazai. Three other bombs — two in cars and one in a motorbike — were defused around the city after bombers left them on main roads and suspicious citizens called the police, said the provincial governor's spokesman, Zelmai Ayubi.

NATO troops and Afghan forces began flooding into Kandahar in July as part of a push to wrest back control of the south from Taliban insurgents. Some pockets of control have been established in Kandahar and neighboring districts but roadside bombs are still common.

A Danish soldier was killed in southern Helmand province after insurgents attacked his patrol on Saturday, the Danish army said.

In a separate incident, a photographer for The New York Times was seriously injured when he stepped on a mine Saturday in Kandahar province.

Joao Silva, 44, received leg injuries from the blast, which occurred while he was accompanying American soldiers on patrol in the Arghandab district. Silva was evacuated to Kandahar Air Field where he was receiving treatment, according to the newspaper.

No U.S. troops were wounded in the morning explosion.

A group of minesweepers and bomb-sniffing dogs had just moved over the area and were several steps ahead of Silva when the bomb went off, the newspaper said. Homemade bombs and mines cause the majority of deaths and injuries among U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Bombs made with small amounts of metal are difficult to detect.

Silva and a New York Times reporter were embedded with a unit of the 101st Airborne Division.

Silva, who has received several awards for his work, has photographed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, southern Africa, the  Balkans and the Middle East.

"Joao is the state-of-the-art war photographer, fearless but careful, with an amazing eye," said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times. "We're all waiting anxiously and praying for his quick recovery."

In August 2009, CBS Radio News correspondent Cami McCormick was seriously injured when the Army vehicle in which she was riding struck a bomb south of Kabul. That same month, two journalists for The Associated Press — photographer Emilio Morenatti and videographer Andi Jatmiko — were wounded along with two U.S. soldiers by a bomb — also in Kandahar province. ___

Associated Press Writers Katharine Houreld in Kabul and Mirwais Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.