The United States military said on Saturday it had captured four suspected al-Qaeda operatives in a raid on their hideout in eastern Afghanistan. There were no casualties on either side during the operation conducted early on Saturday in Sal Kalay village in Khost province near the Pakistan border, it said in a statement.
All 16 people including two Dutch soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed in Afghanistan, a military coalition spokesperson announced on Thursday. The civilian MI8 helicopter crashed into mountains for unknown reasons near south-eastern Paktia province on Wednesday.
More than 600 rebels have been killed in the past 45 days of the biggest anti-Taliban operation since the hard-liners were removed from government in 2001, the United States-led coalition said on Tuesday. Operation Mountain Thrust involves about 10 000 Afghan and coalition troops and support staff.
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.
Little seems to frighten Taliban fighters in their relentlessly bold and bloody attacks on British bases across Helmand. Little, that is, except the menacing throb of an approaching Apache. The British Apache attack helicopters have blunted numerous Taliban offensives and become a key battlefield weapon, according to commanders who are quickly forgetting earlier controversies over the -million per-plane cost.
The United States government said it could not find the men that Guantánamo detainee Abdullah Mujahid believes could help set him free. The Guardian found them in three days. Two years ago the American military invited Mujahid, a former Afghan police commander accused of plotting against the US, to prove his innocence before a special military tribunal.
Simone Thibaudeau hates boring holidays and Claude Fievet loves Central Asia. So when they were invited on a package tour of Afghanistan, the woman of 73 and the man of 80 did not hesitate. "A trip to Afghanistan was so tempting that we decided to do it practically without hesitation and we have no regrets," said Thibaudeau.
Simone Thibaudeau hates boring holidays and Claude Fievet loves Central Asia. So when they were invited on a package tour of Afghanistan, the woman of 73 and the man of 80 did not hesitate. In a Kabul hotel after three weeks in the north of a country that is more associated with war than tourism, they were tired but inspired.
Many great armies have rolled through Maiwand. Over the centuries Persians, Moghuls and Russians have traversed the ramshackle hamlet on the sun-baked plains of western Kandahar. But nobody has forgotten the British. ”Even a child knows the history,” snorted 85-year-old Muhammad Amman, recalling a battle 126 years ago.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rebels have taken advantage of a power vacuum and grown stronger because the world’s attention has been distracted by Iraq, the commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) forces in the country said. British General David Richards said he was "optimistic" of defeating the movement.
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.
The United States-led coalition in Afghanistan said on Wednesday an initial investigation showed that troops opened fire in "self-defence" this week after a deadly traffic accident set off widespread rioting. Afghan officials had told the coalition that 20 people were killed and 160 wounded in the accident and subsequent rioting that engulfed the city on Monday.
Rioters tore through the capital of Afghanistan on Monday, chanting ”Death to America” and torching cars and buildings after United States troops shot dead at least four people following a traffic accident. Gunshots could be heard near Kabul’s diplomatic quarter as restaurants, shops, cars and dozens of police posts were set ablaze.
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.
Fresh insurgent attacks across Afghanistan have claimed nearly 20 more lives, including three police officers and 12 Taliban fighters, officials said on Tuesday. About 300 people have already died in recent days in some of the heaviest fighting since the radical Islamic Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001.
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.
A United States helicopter involved in an anti-Taliban combat operation crashed in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, killing all 10 US soldiers on board, the US military said on Saturday. The crash of the Chinook in Kunar province late on Friday was another blow to coalition forces in Afghanistan after a bomb killed two Italian soldiers near the capital the same day.
Since the Western-led war on drugs started four years ago, only two major drug smugglers have been arrested — Haji Baz Muhammad, who was extradited to the United States last October, and Bashir Noorzai, who was arrested in New York six months earlier. But the remainder are apparently untouchable.
In southern Helmand province, one of the main sources of the world’s opium and heroin, turbaned men fit stones into a cobbled road that is meant to lead them away from growing drugs. Crouching, they peer up at a convoy of armoured vehicles and gun-toting American soldiers that rumbles along the first such road in southern Afghanistan, the most dangerous part of this violent land.
Afghanistan, Myanmar and Malaysia confirmed outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of bird flu and took urgent protective measures on Thursday as the deadly virus continued its march across Asia. Meanwhile, a strain of the bird-flu virus has been found in a dead stray dog in Azerbaijan.
Taliban rebels determined to keep southern Afghanistan in chaos have teamed up with drug barons against the government and its opium eradication campaign launched last week. The campaign to destroy opium poppy fields kicked off on March 8 in southern Helmand, the producer of most of Afghanistan’s opium crop — which makes up nearly 90% of the world total.
Amid dark talk of foreign infiltration in Kandahar after a merciless run of suicide bombings, another, more benign, influence has already breached the city defences: the café latte. In a dusty square clogged with wheezing rickshaws and turbaned men, Kandahar’s first coffee shop has opened.
In the arid fields of southern Afghanistan, farmers in rags tend to green shoots pushing up through the brown earth: the precious crop is opium, illegal and considered against Islam. But, the men explain, they have no choice. ”Without opium, we wouldn’t be able to feed our families,” says one.
United States President George Bush arrived in Afghanistan on Wednesday for his first visit since US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime in 2001. Bush made the surprise stopover, landing at the US military base at Bagram, north of Kabul, as he headed to India to begin a maiden trip to South Asia
No image available
/ 10 February 2006
Police arrested two South African nationals trying to leave Afghanistan’s main airport with two kilograms of heroin hidden in a photo album, an official said on Friday. The men, carrying doctored South African passports, were trying to fly to China on Thursday, airport police chief Aminaullah Khan told Agence France-Presse.
No image available
/ 7 February 2006
Thirteen people were killed, mostly police, when a suicide bomber loyal to the ousted Taliban regime blew himself up at the police headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Tuesday, officials said. A man claiming to be a spokesperson for the Taliban militia said the radical Sunni Muslim movement was responsible for the blast.
No image available
/ 6 February 2006
Fresh protests against newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad erupted across Afghanistan on Monday, with one demonstrator killed and up to four wounded in clashes, officials said. Protesters threw stones at the Danish, British and French embassies in Kabul as well as the base for the United States-led coalition in Afghanistan.