Three foreign troops killed in Afghanistan

KABUL: Three soldiers in the US-led coalition helping to fight a Taliban-led insurgency in southern Afghanistan have died after their patrol was hit by a bomb, the US military said late Friday.

The three were killed on Friday in the southern province of Uruzgan, it said in a statement. It did not give their nationalities. “Three coalition service members died of wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device during a combat reconnaissance patrol in the Uruzgan province, Friday,” it said.

Many of the troops in Uruzgan — where Taliban have a strong presence — are Australian and Dutch nationals serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces.

The latest fatalities take to 39 the number of international troops to lose their lives in Afghanistan this year, most of them in attacks.

source : jang.com.pk

U.S.-led forces kill Taliban commander: officials

KABUL: U.S.-led troops have killed a wanted Taliban commander in an air strike in Afghanistan’s southwestern province of Badghis, U.S. and Afghan officials said on Monday.

Violence has reached its worst level in Afghanistan ever since the Taliban, ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, made a comeback in 2005 despite growing number of foreign troops. The Taliban commander, Mullah Dastagir, along with eight other militants were killed in a raid on a village near Turkmenistan’s border on Sunday night, the officials said.

Dastagir was behind a series of attacks in Badghis, including an ambush in which 13 Afghan soldiers were killed last November, they added. Before that ambush, Dastagir had been jailed, but was released by order of President Hamid Karzai, a defence ministry official said. The U.S. military confirmed the air strike and the casualties including Dastagir’s killing. The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

Russia still haunted by Afghan ghosts

MOSCOW: Russia on Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan haunted by its catastrophic war against Islamists and convinced the trauma harbours lessons for Western forces today.

On February 15, 1989 the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan, ending a war that Moscow initially saw as a brief incursion to bolster its Afghan supporters but became a protracted and bloody struggle that lasted almost 10 years. The war, which cost over 13,000 Soviet lives and may have killed as many as one million Afghans, led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Islamist Taliban.

Afghanistan to take part in US review: Karzai

KABUL: US President Barack Obama has accepted Kabul’s request to be part of a major review of US strategy in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai and a US envoy said Sunday.

Karzai said he asked Obama by letter for Afghanistan to have a role in the review, which is under way amid concerns about worsening security in this country seven years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime.

US envoy Richard Holbrooke brought the message to Karzai on Saturday that Obama had accepted, the Afghan leader told a joint press conference. A delegation from Afghanistan chaired by Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta would travel to Washington “and will be working jointly with the US government in the review of the strategy in the war on terrorism,” he said.

Holbrooke arrived late Thursday and met with a range of Afghan officials and politicians, international military commanders and diplomats before holding talks with Karzai late Saturday. He has held similar wide-ranging meetings in Pakistan and is due to continue his tour of the region in India.

Top US general condemns Kabul attacks

KABUL: The top international military commander in Afghanistan condemned Wednesday a series of deadly attacks on government offices in the capital, as the "barbaric" face of the Taliban.

At least seven Taliban suicide attackers stormed the justice and education ministries and the prisons directorate in attacks that killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 50 others, officials said.

"This attack shows the real face of the Taliban, who have claimed responsibility for this barbaric action," US General David McKiernan said.

"Once again the Taliban have displayed that they have no respect for Afghan citizens or any desire to see a peaceful future in Afghanistan," he said, offering sympathies for the "callous and indiscriminate attack."

McKiernan heads a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force of about 55,000 soldiers from nearly 40 nations. A separate US-led coalition, which focuses on hunting insurgents, also falls under his command.

The general praised the "swift" reaction of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in dealing with the multiple attacks.

Two NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan

KHOST: A bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday killed two soldiers from the NATO-led force helping to fight an escalating Taliban-led insurgency, a military spokeswoman said.

The blast, similar to scores of others orchestrated by the Taliban against security forces, was on the outskirts of the eastern town of Khost on a road leading to the main US base in eastern Afghanistan.

"Two alliance soldiers were killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) and one wounded," Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Neilson-Green, a spokeswoman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told. She could not disclose the nationalities of those killed in the blast but most soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are US nationals.

Neilson-Green said it was not immediately clear what kind of device caused the explosion. Khost has seen a rash of suicide attacks over the past few months, most claimed by the Taliban. Afghan police confirmed the blast and also said the cause was not immediately clear. "It was against a coalition convoy," provincial police chief Abdul Qayoum Baqizoi told.

Two NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan

KHOST: A bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday killed two soldiers from the NATO-led force helping to fight an escalating Taliban-led insurgency, a military spokeswoman said.

The blast, similar to scores of others orchestrated by the Taliban against security forces, was on the outskirts of the eastern town of Khost on a road leading to the main US base in eastern Afghanistan.

"Two alliance soldiers were killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) and one wounded," Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Neilson-Green, a spokeswoman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told. She could not disclose the nationalities of those killed in the blast but most soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are US nationals.

Neilson-Green said it was not immediately clear what kind of device caused the explosion. Khost has seen a rash of suicide attacks over the past few months, most claimed by the Taliban. Afghan police confirmed the blast and also said the cause was not immediately clear. "It was against a coalition convoy," provincial police chief Abdul Qayoum Baqizoi told.