The spread in violence has forced many schools to close, undermining fragile gains in education for girls
The latest Kandahar massacre has illustrated how soldier’s have hardened and how their natural ‘shoot-to-miss’ instinct have been stifled.
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/ 15 December 2010
Foreign and Afghan forces have pushed back the Taliban insurgency in the key Kandahar province battleground.
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/ 10 November 2010
The future of Afghanistan is placed in the hands of police officers and their superiors. Focus is placed on skills development and education.
Taliban suicide bombers struck across Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar on Saturday, killing at least 35 people and wounding scores.
Nato and US forces said they had carried out a strike in Afghanistan, but denied allegations on Wednesday that civilians were killed in their sleep.
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/ 12 November 2008
Attackers used a water pistol to spray acid at schoolgirls in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar Wednesday, hurting 15 of them.
A suicide attack on a Nato convoy in southern Afghanistan on Friday killed 10 civilians and wounded some Nato soldiers.
Afghan and Nato-led forces killed or wounded hundreds of Taliban on Thursday in an offensive to clear the militants from the outskirts of Kandahar.
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s President, escalated tensions with neighbouring Pakistan on Sunday by threatening to send troops across the border.
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/ 18 February 2008
A suicide bomber targeting a military convoy in Afghanistan killed 35 people in an attack near the Pakistan border on Monday. The attack, a day after more than 100 people were killed in the deadliest suicide raid since 2001, comes as some Western politicians call for a stronger resolve to stop Afghanistan sliding back into anarchy.
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/ 18 November 2007
Afghan and Nato-led troops, backed by air power, killed at least 12 Taliban fighters and wounded another 15 in an operation in southern Afghanistan, a Defence Ministry spokesperson said on Sunday. Mostly Canadian Nato troops and Taliban insurgents have been engaged in fierce fighting in the Zherai district, west of the biggest southern city of Kandahar.
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/ 31 October 2007
Afghan and Nato forces have killed 50 Taliban rebels in three days of clashes and surrounded 200 others who occupied civilian homes in southern Afghanistan, police said on Wednesday. Civilians were fleeing on motorbikes, tractors, cars and animals piled with their belongings amid the fighting, provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib said.
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/ 10 September 2007
At least 26 people, many of them civilians, were killed on Monday in two simultaneous suicide attacks in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, a provincial police official said. About 45 people were also wounded in the twin blasts that targeted a group of police in a shopping area of the Girishk district of the province.
Afghan forces have killed 21 Taliban insurgents in the southern province of Zabul, a provincial official said on Monday. ”We received intelligence that a sizeable group of Taliban militants were gathered in the Shah Joy district of Zabul in an attempt to block the Kabul-Kandahar highway, and to launch attacks on Afghan and foreign forces,” said provincial deputy governor Gulab Shah Alikhil.
An air strike by foreign-led forces killed 25 civilians, including 12 members of a family, and 20 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, the provincial police chief said on Friday. Hussien Andiwal said the raid took place on Thursday night as part of an operation against Taliban fighters by foreign forces and Afghan troops.
More than 30 rebel fighters were killed in southern Afghanistan early on Sunday, a police chief said, as the Nato force announced it had killed "a significant number" of Taliban leaders. The rebels were killed in a military sweep involving foreign forces in the southern province of Ghazni, provincial police commander Alishah Ahmadzai said.
Two Canadian soldiers and 35 Taliban militants were killed in the latest violence to rock insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday. The Islamist Taliban fighters were killed late on Wednesday in fierce fighting with Afghan and United States-led troops in troubled Zabul province.
Afghan-led forces killed 69 Taliban in a major operation against rebel strongholds in southern Afghanistan, while seven police also died, the Defence Ministry said Friday. Thursday’s push through part of the southern province of Helmand was the first ”where foreign forces have not participated”, Defence Ministry spokesperson Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.
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/ 18 December 2006
A solid set of rules is the bedrock of a successful organisation, as any manager will testify. Afghanistan’s Taliban are no different. Most of the 30 new rules for recruits to jihad, or holy war, are predictably concerned with the finer points of killing and destruction. But others will sound familiar to those in more conventional lines of work.
More than 70 Taliban guerrillas have been killed in fighting with Nato and Afghan forces in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, a provincial police official said on Sunday. The battle erupted late on Saturday after hundreds of Taliban attacked the district government headquarters.
A suicide car-bomb attack aimed at a convoy of Nato troops in southern Afghanistan killed at least 20 civilians on Thursday, a provincial police chief said. The attack in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province occurred south-west of its provincial capital near where two separate roadside bombs killed a Canadian soldier and injured four others earlier in the day.
A bomb in a police car killed at least eight Afghans on Monday as Nato forces took control of security in southern Afghanistan to begin one of the biggest ground operations in the alliance’s history. The blast occurred in the eastern city of Jalalabad, far from the transfer-of-command ceremony on a base outside the southern city of Kandahar.
United States-led coalition troops and Afghan security forces destroyed an ”extremist safe haven” and killed more than 40 militants on Monday in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said. An Afghan soldier was also killed and three coalition troops wounded in the operation in troubled Uruzgan province, it said in a statement.
Police on Thursday arrested a suspected Taliban militant entering a provincial capital in restive southern Afghanistan with explosives loaded on a donkey, officials said. "Police had reports that some explosives were being brought into the city on a donkey," the government spokesperson in troubled Zabul, Gulab Shah Alikhail, told Agence France-Presse.
Coalition warplanes bombed Taliban meeting in a mosque in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing up to 50 suspected rebels, Afghan and the United States-led coalition officials said. Five Canadian soldiers were wounded and a suspected Taliban killed in a gun battle elsewhere in the volatile south.
An upsurge in violence in Afghanistan over the past week was the result of pressure on the Taliban from al-Qaeda and other supporters, a provincial governor said, citing Afghan intelligence. This included al-Qaeda and other militants based in neighbouring Pakistan, said Asadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar province.
Afghan troops, backed by coalition planes and artillery, battled a strong force of Taliban insurgents overnight and early on Thursday in southern Afghanistan, already reeling from some of the heaviest fighting in years. New fighting erupted late on Wednesday in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province, a coalition spokesperson said.
Sixty suspected Taliban and five members of the Afghan security forces were killed in a major new clash in southern Afghanistan, a top Afghan army commander and police said on Wednesday. The fighting erupted on Tuesday after an Afghan army patrol came under attack in volatile Uruzgan province.
Up to 80 Taliban rebels and at least 16 civilians were killed on Monday during a coalition air and ground attack on a village in southern Afghanistan, officials and witnesses said. The United States-led coalition said it called in war planes after troops who were trying to capture insurgents in Kandahar province came under fire.
Taliban militants fought fierce battles with coalition and Afghan forces in a dramatic upsurge of violence in southern Afghanistan, leaving up to 100 people — mostly rebels — dead, officials said on Thursday. Two suicide bombs also rocked the insurgency hit country. One, in western Afghanistan, killed a United States anti-narcotics adviser.
Thirteen policemen were killed in two major battles in southern Afghanistan in which a Canadian soldier lost her life and nearly 60 Taliban rebels died, police and the United States-led coalition said on Thursday. One battle raged in Helmand province for several hours late on Wednesday after police stormed a district on a tip-off that Taliban fighters had gathered there.