A Taliban fighter accused of masterminding a string of attacks on UK forces in Afghanistan has been killed in a ”deliberate and surgical strike”.
Waheed Ullah, a scruffy Kabul shoeshine boy, had never heard of skateboarding. Then one evening he perched his body on a skateboard and pushed off.
Afghan police backed by Nato air strikes killed 14 Taliban insurgents after the militants attacked a small town in eastern Afghanistan.
US-led coalition forces killed 55 militants including three ”extremist leaders” in fighting near the insurgency-hit Afghan-Pakistani border.
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.
The day Ali Reza stopped being a child his father told him to walk. The 12-year-old Afghan remembers it well because it was on that day that he left his country and was forced to become a man.
Afghan authorities said on Saturday they have killed more than 100 Taliban-linked militants in an operation to retake a remote district from the rebels in south-western Afghanistan. The rebels were killed during two days of operations by Afghan security forces and their international allies in Bakwa, a remote district in the south-western province of Farah.
Afghanistan, struggling with a huge indigenous drug problem, has a new crisis. Its drug treatment centres — particularly in the capital, Kabul – are being inundated by heroin-addicted former refugees, many forcibly expelled from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan.
Taliban insurgents have ordered residents of a province near the capital Kabul to stop watching television, saying the networks were showing un-Islamic programmes, officials and local media said on Tuesday. The order is the last in a wave of curbs that the resurgent militants have announced in areas they are active.
A suspected suicide bomber killed 15 Afghans and wounded 14 more in eastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan on Tuesday, a Nato spokesperson said. The Taliban have vowed to step up suicide attacks this year to undermine the faith of Afghans in the ability of their government to provide security.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai escaped unhurt after an assassination attempt by Taliban fighters with guns and rockets during an official celebration in the capital, Kabul, on Sunday. Government ministers along with leaders of other political factions were seen ducking for cover after gunfire sounded at the celebration to mark the 16th anniversary of fall of the Afghan communist government.
Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, is expected to propose a radical expansion of the Afghan army and call for his troops to take over security responsibilities in Kabul from Nato, according to officials at the alliance’s summit in Bucharest, Romania. The proposal will be discussed by Nato leaders at a meeting on Afghanistan soon.
The new United Nations envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, arrived in Kabul on Friday with a pledge to improve coordination with President Hamid Karzai’s government. ”The Afghan government has asked for that for a very long time and we have to respond in a better way than we have managed so far,” said Eide.
A suicide car bomber killed eight Afghan civilians in an attack on United States troops near the airport in Afghanistan’s capital on Thursday, a Nato spokesperson said. Thirty-five civilians were wounded in the attack, but the four US soldiers inside the two vehicles targeted suffered only minor cuts and bruises.
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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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/ 17 February 2008
A suicide bomber killed more than 80 people at a picnic spot in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Sunday in the most deadly attack since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, the government said. The attack will add urgency to a debate about how the United States and Afghanistan’s other allies can help stem militant violence and promote stability.
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/ 17 February 2008
At least 60 people were killed by an explosion at a picnic spot near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, witnesses and officials said. The cause of the blast in the western outskirts of Kandahar was not known immediately. Some people were also wounded by the explosion which went off at a location where spectators were watching dogs fight.
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/ 9 February 2008
More than 750 people have perished as a result of severe cold and heavy snowfalls this winter across Afghanistan, a government official said on Saturday. The cold spell, the worst in decades in the impoverished and mountainous country, has also killed nearly 230 000 cattle, said Noor Padshah Kohistani of the National Disaster Management Commission.
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/ 31 January 2008
A suicide bomber targeted an Afghan army bus in the centre of Kabul on Thursday, causing numerous casualties, officials said. One civilian was killed and four people were wounded, including an army officer, they said. A purported Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said one of the militant group’s suicide bombers was responsible for the blast.
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/ 16 January 2008
Cold weather and heavy snow have killed more than 100 people and more than 35 000 head of cattle in the past week across Afghanistan, officials said on Wednesday. Several major roads have also been blocked by avalanches and hundreds of people have been affected by bad weather, they said.
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/ 15 January 2008
Taliban militants stormed Kabul’s leading luxury hotel on Monday night, killing seven people in a significant escalation of insurgent tactics against foreign civilians in Afghanistan. The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Jonas Gahr Stoere, and other guests fled into the basement of the five-star Serena hotel.
More than 200 militants were killed in last month’s major operation to retake the southern Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala, the Afghan Defence Ministry said on Thursday. Seventeen Taliban commanders were among the dead following the military operation to drive out the rebels, who had held the small town for 10 months, the ministry said.
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/ 21 December 2007
Living in Afghanistan, the world’s unrivalled producer of heroin, Faqirullah has no problem finding drugs to feed his habit. What concerns him is getting the cash to buy them. No matter how difficult, the 27-year-old says he has to find the equivalent of $4 to $6 for his daily fix. Faqirullah, who goes by a single name, is one of a growing number of Afghan drug addicts.
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/ 15 December 2007
A suicide bomber blew up a car packed with rockets outside police headquarters in the Afghan capital on Saturday killing several people, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The car was packed with BM12 rockets pointing towards the police chief’s office, said a police official.
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/ 5 December 2007
A suicide bomber targeted a bus carrying Afghan army personnel in Kabul on Wednesday, killing six military staff and seven civilians, a defence ministry source said. The bomber used a car in the attack, which happened during the morning rush hour on a road in the south-western part of the city.
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/ 4 December 2007
A suicide bomber rammed a car into a convoy of Nato forces close to the airport in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, wounding 10 Afghan civilians, a police official said. A spokesperson for the Taliban said the militant Islamic group carried out the attack to ”welcome” United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates.
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/ 24 November 2007
A suicide bomb on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Saturday killed six schoolchildren and wounded three Italians working on an aid project building a bridge, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said. ”It was a suicide bomber … six schoolchildren coming out from school were killed,” said Zemarai Bashary.
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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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/ 9 November 2007
A suicide attack in Afghanistan this week killed 59 children and five teachers, the education ministry said Friday, taking the death toll to 75 in the deadliest attack in the insurgency-hit country. Six lawmakers and five bodyguards were also killed in the blast on Tuesday in the northern province of Baghlan.
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/ 7 November 2007
Afghans began three days of national mourning on Wednesday for 41 people, many of them children, killed in the country’s worst suicide attack to date. The attack shakes public confidence in the ability of the Afghan government and the 50 000 foreign troops in the country to provide security.
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/ 6 November 2007
A suicide attack on a parliamentary delegation killed at least 50 people in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a provincial official said, in the worst such blast in the country’s history. Five members of the Afghan Parliament were among the dead and the toll was expected to rise among the delegates and schoolchildren who were among the victims.