The hundreds of bullets, mortar shells and rockets that slammed into the boulders behind which they were taking cover peppered the men of 1st Platoon with high-velocity rock shards and jagged bits of shrapnel. Just below Outpost (OP) Shal, a newly constructed mountaintop aerie in Afghanistan's violent Kunar province on the Pakistani border, insurgent fighters were moaning and screaming from wounds suffered over eight days of heavy fighting. That scene, just three months ago, of the outnumbered American platoon fighting to maintain its foothold offered a sobering contrast to President Barack Obama's statement, in last week's State of the Union address: "The Taliban's momentum has been broken." Like the battle scene witnessed by TIME, the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan reportedly also casts doubt on the confidence expressed by President Obama on the state of the Taliban's war effort. The top-secret assessment "takes a dim view of possible futures in Afghanistan," Reuters was told last week by a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity. The report, which represents the consensus view of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, warns that the Taliban has not given up on its aim of retaking full control of Afghanistan and concludes that the gains made by the troop surge ordered by President Obama two years ago may be unsustainable, according to McClatchy Newspapers.

France’s call for a speedier NATO exit from Afghanistan reflects the depth of war fatigue in the West and raises fears that other countries in the US-led coalition will succumb to rising political pressure and pull their troops home early. French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to fast-track its withdrawal - just days after an Afghan soldier gunned down four French troops - is the latest crack in a coalition strained by economic troubles in Europe and the United States, the Afghan government’s sluggish battle against corruption, on-again off-again cooperation from neighboring Pakistan, and a bloodied but dogged Taliban. The international coalition is rushing against the clock to meet President Hamid Karzai’s goal of having the Afghan police and army in charge of the nation’s security by the end of 2014. France’s break with that timetable, which was agreed to by NATO members, now raises the question: Can the coalition stay together until then? Resetting the date to end the coalition’s combat mission could strengthen arguments for President Obama to accelerate US troop withdrawals beyond the 33,000 he is sending home by the end of this year, and it could reopen a debate over whether setting a withdrawal deadline allows the Taliban to seize more territory once foreign forces are gone. It is unclear whether Sarkozy’s call for all foreign forces to hand security over to the Afghan forces in 2013 will have any traction when it is presented next week at a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels. If other nations see France’s move as a green light to speed up their withdrawals, it will complicate the current strategy for a coordinated pullout. In a gentle rebuke to France, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said in London yesterday that withdrawals should be dependent on security conditions on the ground. Britain has said it is keeping to plans to withdraw its 9,500 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. “The rate at which we can reduce our troops will depend on the transition to Afghan control in the different parts of Afghanistan, and that should be the same for all of the members of NATO,’’ Cameron said after meeting with Karzai. Other nations facing extreme economic problems, such as Italy and Spain, are not planning early withdrawals. “We are a responsible country. We are a big country that honors its commitments that it agrees to make,’’ said Italy’s defense minister, Giampaolo Di Paola. Italy signed a pact this week aimed at supporting Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw in 2014. Germany also said it agrees with the goal to hand over security responsibility by the end of 2014 and withdraw combat troops. Sarkozy said France will speed up its withdrawal and pull 1,000 - up from 600 - out this year and bring all combat forces home at the end of 2013. Sarkozy also said France would hand over authority in Kapisa Province, where the French troops were killed this month, by the end of March. France, which now has about 3,600 soldiers in the coalition force, joins the United States, Britain, Germany, and Italy in the top five largest troop-contributing nations. Talk of an accelerated exit alarmed many Afghans, especially those who have cast their lot with the US-backed government but have little confidence in their country’s own security forces. Some said France was reneging on its promises. Afghan lawmaker Tahira Mujadedi, who represents Kapisa, said Afghan forces there are not ready to go it alone in fighting the Taliban insurgency, which is especially strong in several of the province’s districts. She warned that if NATO forces pull back from Kapisa, it could destabilize nearby Kabul. Foreign forces should consider staying even longer than 2014, she said. “When military forces are present in a war zone, anything can happen,’’ said Mujadedi, who expressed sadness about the French troops who were killed. But she added: “They are not here for a holiday.’’

Unidentified assailants rained rockets on Pakistan’s elite military academy on Friday morning, in an unusual burst of violence near the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in May. Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors Enlarge This Image Adnan Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Pakistani security officials searched a hilltop area overlooking Abbottabad on Friday. Nine rockets were fired from a hilltop overlooking Abbottabad, a garrison town 35 miles north of Islamabad, said Khalid Khan Umarzai, the commissioner of Abbottabad division. Three rockets hit the wall of the Pakistan Military Academy, Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point. “Some exploded, some did not,” Mr. Umarzai said. “There was no loss of life.” No group claimed responsibility, and the military said it had dispatched investigators. “I don’t know who could be involved because I don’t remember any previous incident like this” close to the academy, said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, an army spokesman. Abbottabad gained global attention last May as the scene of the dramatic Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and plunged American relations with Pakistan into turmoil. The town is the birthplace of Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national killed in an American drone strike in North Waziristan on Jan. 10. American officials described Mr. Awan, who studied in Britain, as a senior external operations planner for Al Qaeda.   Additionally, Umar Patek, an Indonesian militant accused of involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, was arrested in Abbottabad by Pakistani authorities in January 2011. The United States government had offered a $1 million reward for Mr. Patek’s capture. But the town had otherwise escaped the militant bloodshed that has plagued Pakistan in recent years. It has suffered no suicide bombings and few shootings. As well as being home to thousands of soldiers, Abbottabad is located between the turbulent border regions and the disputed territory of Kashmir, which has been a source of conflict between Pakistan and India for more than six decades. Since the 1990s Pakistani intelligence has quietly run training camps in the hills above Abbottabad for Islamist militants fighting in Indian-occupied Kashmir. The camps’ current status is unclear. Abbottabad is also close to the Swat Valley, where Pakistani soldiers conducted a major anti-Taliban operation in 2009. Swat-based militants could be behind Friday’s attack, a senior security source said. But the rocket attack also led to speculation about a possible link to Bin Laden. The missiles were fired from a position near a mosque just a half-mile from Bin Laden’s compound, said Mr. Umarzai, the division commissioner. Pakistan’s military has struggled to explain how the world’s most wanted man lived for months, perhaps years, in the shadow of its most prestigious academy. A government commission set up to investigate the circumstances around the American raid is to present its findings by the end of this month.

At least 32 people have died in a suicide car bomb attack near a funeral procession in Baghdad. The bomber detonated a taxi packed with explosives in the mainly Shi'ite Zafaraniyah area in the south of the city. Half of the victims were policemen guarding the march, in the latest brazen attack since the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Police officials said the blast occurred where mourners had gathered for the funeral of a person killed the day before. They said 65 people were wounded, including 16 policemen. More than 320 people have been killed in attacks in Iraq since the start of the year alone and nearly 800 more wounded - more than double last year's figure for violent deaths in January.

Security forces killed 37 people in Syria on Friday, activists and residents said, as people in Homs mourned 14 members of a family they said were slain by militiamen in one of the worst sectarian attacks in a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. The U.N. Security Council was to meet later in the day to discuss Syria before a possible vote next week on a new Western-Arab draft resolution aimed at halting 10 months of bloodshed. Russia, which joined China in vetoing a previous Western draft resolution in October and which has since promoted its own draft, said the Western-Arab version was unacceptable and vowed to block any text calling for Assad's resignation. There was no let-up in violence on Friday, when anti-Assad protests again erupted after weekly Muslim prayers. Tank and mortar fire killed 15 people in Hama, a resident said, on the fourth day of an army assault on rebellious districts of the city, where Assad's father crushed an armed Islamist uprising in 1982, killing many thousands. The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 22 people killed elsewhere in Syria, including 12 when security forces fired on a funeral march in the southern town of Nowa, five in the normally peaceful city of Aleppo, and four in Homs. Machinegun fire wounded five people in the Qusour district of Homs, one activist there said, adding that the city was calmer than it was at the height of Thursday's violence, when 16 people were also killed by mortar fire from security forces. The state news agency SANA said "terrorists" killed a security man in Homs on Friday and a bomb killed a child and wounded several civilians and security personnel in the Damascus district of Midan. SANA also said a bomb wounded three civilians and three security men in the northeastern town of Albukamal and that a suicide bomber had wounded two security men at a checkpoint in the northwestern province of Idlib. Arab League observers headed for the Damascus suburb of Douma, where government troops battled rebel fighters the previous day as the struggle to topple Assad rumbled close to the Syrian capital. TRANSITION PLAN The Arab League has demanded that the Syrian leader step down as part of a transition to democracy, a call rejected by Damascus. The government says it is fighting foreign-backed armed "terrorists" who have killed 2,000 soldiers and police. "Any decision about a future political settlement in Syria must be made during the political process without ... preliminary conditions," Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying. He stopped short of saying Moscow would veto a Western-Arab draft if the call for Assad to hand over power was not removed. The text calls for a "political transition," but not for United Nations sanctions against Assad's government, which Moscow, an old ally and arms supplier of Syria, opposes. Russia and Iran are among Syria's few remaining allies. In another sign of Assad's isolation, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has effectively abandoned his headquarters in Damascus, diplomatic and intelligence sources said. "He's not going back to Syria," a regional intelligence source said of Meshaal, who has long been based in the Syrian capital. He heads the Palestinian Islamist group which rules Gaza and is an armed offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Analysts say Meshaal was embarrassed by Assad's crackdown, in which more than 5,000 people have been killed, many of them Sunni Muslim sympathisers of the Muslim Brotherhood. Homs, a mostly Sunni city with minority Alawite enclaves, has become a battleground since protests against Assad began in March, inspired by pro-democracy revolts elsewhere in the Arab world. Armed rebels have joined the fray in recent months. GRISLY FOOTAGE Residents and activists said militiamen from Assad's Alawite sect had shot or hacked to death 14 members of the Sunni Bahader family in Homs's Karm al-Zaitoun district on Thursday, including eight children, aged eight months to nine years old. YouTube video footage taken by activists, which could not be verified, showed the bodies of five children with wounds to the head and neck, three women and a man in a house. There was no comment from Syrian authorities, which enforce tight restrictions on independent media. At least 384 children have been killed since the uprising began in March and a similar number have been jailed, the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday. The British-based Observatory said 43 civilians were killed on Thursday, including 33 in Homs, of whom nine were children. Hamza, an activist in Homs, said the militiamen who attacked the Sunni family were avenging deaths inflicted on their ranks by army defectors loosely grouped in the rebel Free Syrian Army. Tit-for-tat sectarian killings began in Homs four months ago. Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has dominated the political and security apparatus in Syria, a mostly Sunni nation of 23 million, for five decades. "The Assads are the dirtiest of families," shouted crowds in Deir Balba, on the edge of Homs, according to a YouTube clip that showed people waving pre-Baath party Syrian flags. In the city's Bab Amro district, demonstrators carried the body of a youth who had been shot in the head. "Bashar, your mother will bury you," they chanted, YouTube footage showed. It was not possible to verify the footage, which anti-Assad campaigners had posted on the Internet. The opposition Local Coordination Committees said security forces had fired on an anti-Assad protest by refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights who live in Thiabieh near Damascus. It said several protesters were wounded. Activists in the Damascus suburb of Irbin said 15,000 people had turned out to demonstrate against Assad. Several thousand also gathered in the rain in the ancient, eastern desert town of Palmyra, clapping to anti-Assad anthems. "Bashar, God is greater (than you)!" they sang.

This deployment defied explicit Iranian threats to close the waterway. It coincided with an escalation in the West's confrontation with Iran over the country's nuclear ambitions. European Union foreign ministers are today expected to announce an embargo on Iranian oil exports, amounting to the most significant package of sanctions yet agreed. They are also likely to impose a partial freeze on assets held by the Iranian Central Bank in the EU. Tehran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Tankers carrying 17 million barrels of oil pass through this waterway every day, accounting for 35 per cent of the world's seaborne crude shipments. At its narrowest point, located between Iran and Oman, the Strait is only 21 miles wide. Last month, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Iranian navy, claimed that closing the Strait would be "easy," adding: "As Iranians say, it will be easier than drinking a glass of water." But USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered carrier capable of embarking 90 aircraft, passed through this channel and entered the Gulf without incident yesterday. HMS Argyll, a Type 23 frigate from the Royal Navy, was one of the escort vessels making up the carrier battle-group. A guided missile cruiser and two destroyers from the US Navy completed the flotilla, along with one warship from the French navy.

The body of a Briton, who was taken hostage in Iraq in 2007 and later killed, has been handed over to the British embassy in Baghdad. Alan McMenemy, a security guard from Glasgow, was kidnapped by Asaib al-Haq (Leagues of Righteousness) in Baghdad along with colleagues Jason Creswell, Jason Swindlehurst and Alan MacLachlan and an IT consultant, Peter Moore, on 29 May 2007. Creswell, Swindlehurst and MacLachlan were killed and their bodies recovered in 2009. Moore was released in December 2009. An inquest in 2011 heard that Creswell, Swindlehurst and MacLachlan, who were working as Moore's bodyguards, were subjected to mock executions, regularly beaten and kept chained and blindfolded for long periods before they were shot dead by their captors. The prime minister, David Cameron, said: "It is with great sadness that I can confirm that the British embassy in Baghdad received a body today that has been identified as Alan McMenemy, who was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2007, along with four other men." "My thoughts are with Alan's family and friends at this time. They have waited so long for his return and I hope that this will allow them to find some peace after an ordeal that no family should ever have to suffer. "At this time, we should also take time to remember the families of Margaret Hassan and Ken Bigley, who are still waiting for the return of their loved ones." A statement from Rosaleen McMenemy, Alan's wife, said: "Our families have suffered terrible uncertainty and distress over the past four years and eight months. We have worried about Alan every single minute of each waking day. We now know that we will shortly have Alan home again. This will allow us to properly grieve for him and we will draw some comfort from the fact that we have him home at last. "I would like to thank my wider family, all our friends, colleagues, the many organisations and others too numerous to name who have stood with us over this most difficult of times. Without their support, we would not have made it through these dark days. "I would respectfully ask that we as a family are allowed the space and time to grieve in our own way, and if at all possible to attempt to return to some form of normal life."

At least two of four US Marines shown in a video appearing to urinate on Taliban corpses have been identified, a Marine Corps official has told the BBC. The video, which was posted online, purports to show four US Marines standing over the bodies of several Taliban fighters, at least one of whom is covered in blood. The Marines have begun a criminal investigation and an internal inquiry. US officials and Afghan officials have condemned the video as "deplorable". The origin of the video is not known, but it was originally posted to YouTube. The BBC's Steve Kingstone says the official would not confirm the Marines' whereabouts, but news reports suggested the unit involved was based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina - a major military base. A US Marines spokesman, Lt Col Joseph Plenzler, told the AFP news agency that "we cannot release the name of the unit at this time since the incident is being investigated."

A deadline has nearly elapsed for Libya to give the International Criminal Court information about the health and status of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. The former Libyan leader's son was captured in southern Libya in November. The ICC, based in The Hague, has indicted him for crimes against humanity but Libya's new leaders say they want him to stand trial in Libya. The ICC could refer Libya to the UN Security Council if it does not respond to its request on Tuesday. Continue reading the main story Saif al-Islam: ICC charges Indirect co-perpetrator of murder and persecution as crimes against humanity Between 15 February and 28 February, Gaddafi security forces carried out systematic attacks against civilians Saif al-Islam "assumed essential tasks" to make sure plan worked ICC warrant In pictures: Saif's rise and fall Profile: Saif al-Islam How Saif al-Islam was captured Gaddafi son 'has not seen lawyer' The ICC has accepted that Saif al-Islam will be tried in Libya but wants assurances that the country's justice system can produce a fair trial. In a visit to Libya in November, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo said: "The standard of the ICC is that it has to be a judicial process that is not organised to shield the suspect… and I respect that it's important for the cases to be tried in Libya… and I am not competing for the case." Saif al-Islam, Colonel Gaddafi's most prominent son, is being held in the western town of Zintan. He was arrested while trying to flee the country. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi told a representative of Human Rights Watch last month that he was being treated well, but had not seen a lawyer or the detailed charges against him. Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch told the BBC that he had the impression from their meeting that Saif al-Islam "doesn't fully understand that he is no longer one of the most powerful people in the country". The BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse, who is in Tripoli, says the case of the former leader's son charged with war crimes is becoming an unlikely cause for human rights campaigners.

In an interview with the Polish Press Agency the day after he shot himself in the head only to survive, Col Mikolaj Przybyl said his life had been threatened and that he was a marked man. The officer also claimed his flat had been broken into, the tires on his car tampered with in an apparent assassination attempt, and that his dog had been killed as part of an intimidation campaign. He added his suicide attempt had been "influenced" by his investigation into the high-level corruption. "My act was influenced by the cases I am investigating: one of them is the most serious involving financial issues in the Polish military," said the colonel. Col. Przybyl had tried to commit suicide after breaking a press conference in the western city of Poznan to "air the room". After journalists had left his office he put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. A television camera left rolling recorded the sound of the gun being cocked, a shot and that of a body hitting the floor.

BBC's Mohsen Asgari: "It seems a motor cyclist pasted a bomb to his car which he was in with two other passengers Continue reading the main story Iran nuclear crisis Undeclared pursuit? Q&A: Nuclear issue Key nuclear sites Sanctions' impact Watch A university lecturer and nuclear scientist has been killed in a car explosion in north Tehran. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an academic who also worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, and the driver of the car were killed in the attack. The blast happened after a motorcyclist stuck an apparent bomb to the car. Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US. Both countries deny the accusations. Continue reading the main story Analysis Frank Gardner BBC security correspondent The assassination on Wednesday of another Iranian nuclear scientist may now prompt Iran to try to respond in kind. The murder in Tehran of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan comes on top of a sophisticated cyber sabotage programme and two mysterious explosions at Iranian military bases, one of which in November killed the general known as 'the godfather' of Iran's ballistic missile programme. No-one is claiming responsibility for these attacks but Iran blames its longstanding enemy, Israel, and occasionally the US. Whoever is behind them, Iran is clearly being subjected to an undeclared campaign to slow down its nuclear programme. Frank Gardner's analysis in full Iran's Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told state television that the attack against Mr Ahmadi-Roshan would not stop "progress" in the country's nuclear programme. He called the killing "evidence of [foreign] government-sponsored terrorism". Local sources said Wednesday's blast took place at a faculty of Iran's Allameh Tabatai university. Two others were reportedly also injured in the blast, which took place near Gol Nabi Street, in the north of the capital