Share this story!            

16 US troops killed in Taliban attack

* Three marines wounded by landmine blast in Kunar
* Rocket attack on US base set up inside Mulla Omar’s home

CHAMAN: Sixteen US troops and several Afghan militiamen were killed in two separate encounters near Spin Buldak and Urzagan on Friday night.

Reports reaching from across the border said, Taliban and Hizb-e-Islami fighters in a joint operation in Urzagan area ambushed a US convoy and killed 12 US troops and four Afghan soldiers. A Taliban commander was also injured seriously.

The Taliban also killed four US soldiers in Spin Boldak during another ambush, reports said. The attackers managed to escape.

Meanwhile, a man was killed and another wounded when they set off a landmine while digging a well in a war-battered area of the Afghan capital on Saturday, police said.

Kabul police chief Basir Salangi said the blast happened near a police station in Chilstoon in the south of the city. “A man was killed and another injured,” he said. Police at the scene said the men triggered the mine, which was likely left over from factional fighting in the 1990s, while digging a well. Kabul has experienced several bomb blasts and rocket attacks since the overthrow of the hardline Taliban regime in 2001, some of which have targeted foreign peacekeepers.

Three US soldiers were wounded when their vehicle was hit by a bomb in northeastern Afghanistan, a US military spokesman said on Saturday.

“Three coalition soldiers were wounded and one vehicle was damaged when an improvised explosive device detonated in the middle of their convoy approximately eight kilometers south of Asad Abad on Friday afternoon,” Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Lefforge told reporters at Bagram Air Base.

“It was a deliberately planted bomb,” he said, adding it was not known who was behind the attack in eastern Kunar province.

“The three soldiers were medically evacuated to Bagram Air Base yesterday and are in stable condition,” Lefforge said. He said they could be shifted to Germany for further treatment if the injuries are deemed to be serious.

A US military base at Spin Boldak, east of Kandahar province, late on Friday came under rocket attack but there were no casualties, Lefforge said. “Two rockets impacted in the vicinity of the fire base at Spin Boldak last night,” he said. Lefforge said Afghan police were searching for the attackers in a nearby village.

Earlier, a rocket was fired at a US Special Forces base inside the former house of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in the city of Kandahar, without causing casualties, officials said on Saturday. The rocket was fired on Friday evening and landed several meters behind the compound in the southern Afghan city, causing only minor damage. Provincial security official Mohammad Salim Ehsas said the rocket was fired from the village of Qasam Pul, southeast of Kandahar. He said three people had been arrested and that sympathisers of the former Taliban Islamic fundamentalist regime were suspected of carrying out the attack.

Meanwhile, Afghan authorities confiscated hundreds of copies of a weekly newspaper on Saturday after it published an article demanding President Hamid Karzai resign for apologising to Pakistan over an attack on its embassy.

The article in Payam-e-Mujahid, owned by the Northern Alliance faction that dominates Karzai’s government, accused the president of making the apology under pressure from the US ambassador and described it as dishonour for Afghans.

Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the alliance’s military leader, ordered the confiscation, officials of his ministry said, in a move seen as an attempt to distance himself from the article. The officials said several hundred copies had been seized from newsstands. The recent attack on the Pakistani embassy came after Karzai responded angrily to alleged criticism of his government by Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf and as officials accused Pakistani troops of encroaching into Afghan territory. Nobody was hurt in the embassy attack, but windows were smashed and office equipment and vehicles damaged. Soon afterwards, Karzai phoned Musharraf to apologise while the government promised compensation. —Agencies

16 Afghan prisoners return from Guantanamo

KABUL: Sixteen Afghans detained by the American military at Guantanamo Bay were freed here Saturday following their return from Cuba three days earlier, an Afghan police official said. “Sixteen Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay arrived Thursday night by plane at the Bagram Air Base (40 kilometres north of Kabul),” said police official Mohammad Khalil Aminzada. “They were handed over immediately to the Afghan police and brought that evening to Kabul,” he said. The sixteen were interrogated for two days by the police and then freed late Saturday afternoon and handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross, he said. A Pentagon official said Friday that about 30 detainees, some from Pakistan and Afghanistan, had left Guantanamo Bay to be repatriated to their countries. The released Afghan prisoners were not allowed to talk to journalists. About 680 alleged members of the deposed Taliban regime and suspected al-Qaeda terrorists are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Originating from 42 countries, they have been held and interrogated by the United States for up to 18 months at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Classified as “illegal combatants” by President George W. Bush, their fate is uncertain. But several groups have already been returned to their countries of origin, where the local authorities decide if they are to be released. —AFP

Home | Main

Share this story!