Bomb ripped through a vehicle carrying labourers to work in volatile eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing one worker and wounding 11 other people, police said.
The bloodshed follows a string of deadly attacks in recent days with US President Barack Obama poised to unveil a new strategy hoping to turn the tide in a war that has dragged on for more than seven years.The bomb struck labourers from a private construction company as they were travelling to work in Khost province early Sunday, provincial police chief Abdul Qayoom Baqizoi said.Twelve people were wounded and one died later in hospital, he said.There was no claim of responsibility but the attack was similar to scores of others blamed on Taliban insurgents.The US military said five militants were killed and four suspects detained in an operation waged with Afghan forces in northeastern Kunduz province.The operation targeted "a terrorist network" near the Afghan-Tajik border early Sunday, it said in a statement.
Local media reports said, however, that officials believe the men killed were civilians.There are around 75,000 international troops in Afghanistan helping the government fight the Taliban-led insurgency.Despite the presence and the growth of the local forces, violence has grown steadily since the Taliban regime was removed in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

Militants killed nine NATO soldiers in an assault on a remote base in northeastern Afghanistan, officials said, in one of the deadliest attacks on foreign forces fighting the Taliban insurgency. The attack on the military outpost on Sunday came as a suicide bomber targeted police in a busy bazaar in southern Uruzgan province, killing 24 Afghans including children, police officials said.In bloody carnage in several parts of Afghanistan, at least 40 insurgents were also killed in two days of fighting in southern Helmand province, the US-led coalition announced.A tenth foreign soldier was also killed in a bomb blast in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, the coalition said.Militants launched an early morning attack on the NATO base, in mountainous Kunar province near the Pakistan border, which soldiers from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force had only recently occupied, the force said.The rebels were beaten back after several hours and were believed to have suffered heavy casualties, it said in a statement."Nine ISAF soldiers died in fighting in northeastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border," the statement said. Fifteen ISAF soliders were also wounded along with four Afghan troops.ISAF, which draws nearly 53,000 soldiers from about 40 countries, did not give the nationalities of those killed, leaving such announcements for their home nation, but most of the soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are US nationals.It was one of the deadliest battles so far for the international forces that arrived in Afghanistan in late 2001 to oust the hardline Taliban movement now waging an insurgency that is backed by Al-Qaeda and other extremists.Sunday’s deaths take to 133 the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year amid a spike in the insurgency-linked violence.
Afghan officials allege militants are being recruited and trained in Pakistan, coming across the border to launch suicide and other attacks and destabilise the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta called Sunday for the region to work together to deal with the violence - in a reference to Pakistan."The terrorist enemy behind these operations, which are sustained by a complex set of networks and infrastructure located behind the border of Afghanistan, cannot be defended by military operations inside Afghanistan alone," Spanta said.Afghan officials have accused Pakistan of being behind a suicide blast at the Indian embassy in Kabul this month that left 41 people dead, saying the attack had the hallmarks of its intelligence agency.Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack, the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban.In Kunar meanwhile, an Afghan official said international war planes had bombed the area during fighting around the base, and there may also have been civilian casualties.
In the south of the country, a suicide attacker with bombs strapped to his body rammed a motorbike into a police car in the bazaar in Uruzgan, police said. All of the dead were civilians except for four policemen, said Uruzgan police chief Juma Gul Hemat."Most of the casualties are shopkeepers and people and children who were selling stuff on the roadside," said a shopkeeper who gave his name only as Fazlullah.The coalition announced it had killed at least 40 militants in an operation that started Saturday and was still under way in Helmand.Afghan and coalition forces under attack had returned fire and called in air strikes, it said in a statement."At least 40 militants have been killed in the last two days, while over 30 enemy boats and several ... bridges were also destroyed on the Helmand River."

roadside bomb killed four U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, inflicting the year's deadliest single attack on international forces a week after Washington set plans to send reinforcements. An Afghan civilian working with the Americans also died.The Americans were patrolling with Afghan soldiers when their vehicle struck a bomb Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. military said in a statement. The military withheld identities of the dead and the attack's location pending notification of relatives.
The previous deadliest attack on U.S. troops this year was an explosion in Zabul province in January that killed three Americans.Twenty-nine U.S. military personnel have died in Afghanistan this year, far surpassing the eight Americans killed in the first two months of 2008. A total of 654 have died since the U.S.-led offensive that ousted Afghanistan's Taliban regime in late 2001.Taliban militants have increased attacks the last three years and now hold sway in large areas of countryside, leading the Obama administration to promise an intensified focus on defeating Islamic extremists in this region.

President Barack Obama announced Feb. 17 that he had decided to send 17,000 more soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan, adding to the record 38,000 already fighting a strengthening insurgency. Many of the U.S. troops now operate in Taliban strongholds in the dangerous south.

Obama's order should would put several thousand troops in place in time for the increase in fighting that usually occurs with warmer weather and ahead of Afghan national elections scheduled for August.U.S. officials said last week even more troops could be sent later, but that decision would not be made until a broad review of policy for dealing with militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The review should be completed around the end of March, which coincides with a NATO summit.The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, has been seeking as many as 30,000 additional U.S. troops to counter the resurgence of the Taliban militants and protect Afghan civilians.U.S. commanders say they want to bolster combat units and trainers in the south with enough new troops to stem insurgent violence without becoming an occupying force that would alienate Afghan civilians.In other violence, the U.S. military said coalition and Afghan troops killed 16 militants Monday after insurgents attacked their convoy in southern Helmand province. There were no other reports of casualties, the statement said.

Bombing, airstrikes and clashes between militants and military resulted in 30 deaths in Afghanistan, government and military officials said Wednesday.

The detonation of a bomb planted on a motorbike in Kandahar killed two citizens and injured five Afghan soldiers, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported. A provincial government spokesman said the explosion occurred as a convoy of Afghan troops was passing.

In the southern province of Helmand, militants attacked Afghan soldiers as they were destroying a poppy field, KUNA said, resulting in the deaths of two soldiers. Two foreign civilians were injured.In the same province, U.S.-led coalition troops said 16 militants died during an airstrike. In a statement issued Wednesday, military officials said coalition forces were reconnoitering an area when attacked by a group of militants.In Uruzgan province, coalition troops said 10 militants were killed when they attacked a patrol of multinational troops. KUNA reported military sources said one militant was killed by ground fire and nine died in an airstrike.

Staff Sgt. Timothy P. Davis, 28, of Aberdeen, Wash., died near Bagram, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron from Hurlburt Field, Fla.
An open viewing is scheduled at 11:30 a.m. and memorial service at 1 p.m. Feb. 28 at the Montesano High School gymnasium in Montesano, Wash., followed by burial services at the Wynoochee Cemetery. "Sergeant Davis, or 'DT' as we know him here at the squadron, will be sorely missed," said Maj. Travis Woodworth, acting commander of the 23rd STS. Sergeant Davis enlisted in 1999 and was initially trained as a survival, evasion, resistance and escape instructor after completing basic training. He entered the combat control career field in June 2003. After completing more than two years of training, he reported to the 23rd STS here and served on a combat control team. Sergeant Davis qualified as a joint terminal attack controller, enabling him to provide direct aircraft and support ground combat operations while embedded with U.S. and coalition special forces. This was his second deployment as a JTAC to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. "Tim was one of the first squadron members to volunteer for this recent deployment, despite just getting back from one less than a year ago," Major Woodworth said. "He was the epitome of the quiet professional that we in the Special Operations community strive to be."
The sergeant's military decorations include the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Air Force Commendation Medal and the Air Force Achievement Medal. "Our hearts go out to his family and friends as we at the 23rd STS along with them mourn the loss of one of our own," Major Woodworth said.

Taliban insurgents killed 20 people in Kabul. In Logar province 11 people were killed, including five civilians, four Afghan soldiers and one foreign soldier, in three separate incidents.At about 5:30 a.m. British time an armed suicide bomber tried to enter the Ministry of Education, near the Presidential Palace. He was shot dead by police before he could detonate his device, the interior ministry said. - At about 5:34 a.m. British time five armed suicide bombers entered the Ministry of Justice, also close to the Presidential Palace, and gunned down two security guards, the interior ministry said.A policeman shot dead one of the bombers who had entered the building, while the remaining four would-be bombers gunned-down 10 civilians inside the building, before they were also shot down by police, the interior ministry said.At about 5:35 a.m. British time, two suicide bombers tried to enter the Prison Department building in the north Kabul suburb of Khair Khana. One was killed by a policemen, the other shot dead another policeman, before detonating his device, killing seven policemen, the interior ministry said.In Logar province, about 70 km (45 miles) from Kabul, four Afghan soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle during an operation, a provincial spokesman said.In a separate roadside bomb attack in Logar, one foreign soldier and his Afghan translator were killed, NATO-led forces said in a statement.

US military officer Admiral Mike Mullen said more American troops were needed in Afghanistan as soon as possible to hold territory where insurgents have been routed.
Mullen told a news conference it was up to President Barack Obama to decide when to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan, but he said time was of the essence at what he called a critical period for the country.During a visit to the Canadian capital to discuss the Afghan war among other issues, Mullen was asked about the possible reinforcement of the US mission as requested by the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan."The general had this request out for many months and those working through the request recognise that the sooner the better with respect to this," Mullen said.He said 2009 was a crucial moment with elections scheduled later in the year and an increasingly violent insurgency in the south and east of the country."I'm hopeful that we can get them there as soon as absolutely possible, but, again, that's a decision for the president of the United States, not for me."He said more US troops were needed to allow for development and aid projects to go ahead as insurgents were often moving back into areas where NATO forces had previously pushed them out."It's got to be enough forces to be able not just to clear, but we've got to have enough forces in there to hold, which we haven't had in the past," the US admiral said.His Canadian counterpart, General Walter Natynczyk, agreed.He said his country was looking "forward to the reinforcement of US forces in theatre to enable us to continue not only to secure an area and do the build, but then to hold, something that we've had a challenge with the lack of forces on the ground."Mullen's comments came as the Obama administration reviews US strategy in Afghanistan in the face of an emboldened Taliban insurgency and plans to possibly double the 36,000-strongly US force there.The Afghan mission is a sensitive issue in Canada, where the government has committed to stay in the country only to the end of 2011 after a political deal.More than 100 Canadians have died in Afghanistan since the start of its mission in 2002, with the toll rising after Canadian troops deployed to the country's volatile south in 2006.US officials have suggested that Washington would like to see Ottawa extend its mission but Canadian ministers and military officers have insisted the deadline is firm.Mullen told reporters he had made no request for Canada to remain in Afghanistan beyond 2011, saying Washington would not interfere with Canada's decision.He added the United States would make adjustments as necessary if the Canadian forces depart as planned.More than 400 Canadians have been wounded in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2008, and Admiral Mullen on Monday met some of those injured in combat in the Taliban-dominated south.

Among them was Corporal Michael Trauner, 29, who lost both legs and suffered serious injuries to his left hand in December when an improvised explosive detonated while he was on patrol west of Kandahar.

The explosion threw him 20 feet into the air, he told reporters after meeting the US admiral.An American Blackhawk helicopter evacuated him minutes later and he was treated by a US and Canadian medical team in Afghanistan and later in Germany. His heart stopped twice but he was revived both times, doctors told him later."So far I have had eight surgeries in total, three of them on my hand," said Trauner, of the Royal Canadian Regiment.Doctors are still taking shrapnel out of his shattered left hand, which suffered 25 separate fractures.Trauner said he believed strongly in the mission in Afghanistan and planned to stay in the Canadian armed forces even if he could no longer serve in combat."If we don't do the job, who would?" he said.Canada has about 2,750 soldiers serving among the nearly 70,000 international troops in Afghanistan under NATO and US command.

North Carolina-based Marine died Saturday from injuries suffered two weeks earlier in Afghanistan, the Defense Department reported Tuesday.Lance Cpl. Kevin T. Preach, 21, of Bridgewater, Mass., was gravely wounded Jan. 24 when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb in Farah province, according to media reports. A machine gunner, he was assigned to Camp Lejeune’s 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines.Preach, who reportedly lost both legs and a hand in the attack, suffered severe burns and was being kept on life support at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, according to a report in the Boston Herald. His brother, Dan Preach — who is scheduled to graduate from boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., on Friday — flew to Texas to say goodbye just hours after completing the Crucible, the recruits’ 54-hour final exam, friends told The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass.Wounded during his first combat deployment, Kevin Preach died shortly after his family left the hospital, the newspaper reported.

Downstate police officer and a soldier on his third wartime deployment were identified Tuesday as the two members of the Illinois National Guard killed over the weekend in Afghanistan.First Lt. Jared Southworth, 26, a police officer in the central Illinois town of Oakland, was known for his poise even when he was an ROTC cadet at Eastern Illinois University.Staff Sgt. Jason Burkholder, 27, who recently transferred from Ohio, was a former active-duty Marine who had taken part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and served a second deployment there as a Guardsman before moving on to Afghanistan.The two were killed Sunday when a roadside bomb exploded while they helped stanch the poppy trade in Helmand province in southwest Afghanistan.
Southworth and Burkholder were assigned to the Headquarters Company of the 2nd Battalion, 130th Infantry, based in Marion, Ill. They were the fourth and fifth Illinois soldiers killed since the state sent 2,700 guard troops to Afghanistan in recent months. Staff Sgt. Jason Vazquez and Spec. Joshua Harris were killed in a blast in September, and Staff Sgt. Kevin Grieco died in October.Five other Illinois troops were wounded on Jan. 17 when a suicide car bomber attacked a convoy in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Among the wounded troops was Simone Robinson, 21, a single mother from Robbins. An Army spokeswoman said the soldier was still in critical condition Tuesday in the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where family members have said she was being treated for severe burns, an amputated leg and a skull fracture.Southworth was one of three police officers in Oakland, a town of 1,000 just north of Charleston, Ill.

Russia and four former Soviet republics offered to help the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan even as one, Kyrgyzstan, moved forward on a decision to cut off American access to an air base used for war supplies. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the five countries, including the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, are ready for “full-fledged and comprehensive cooperation” with NATO forces in the region. He spoke on state broadcaster Vesti-24 today. At the same time, Kyrgyz Security Council Secretary Adukhan Madumarov said on the same channel that the U.S. air base at the Manas airport near Bishkek must cease operations within 180 days. The base would be crucial to President Barack Obama’s plans for a buildup of troops to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Kyrgyz Parliament will likely vote Feb. 6 on legislation formally renouncing the agreement allowing U.S. operations at the base, the Interfax news agency reported from Bishkek. Andranik Migranyan, a Russian institute director with ties to senior officials in Moscow, said Russian cooperation on Afghanistan may be linked to progress on resolving differences over issues such as missile defense and NATO expansion. “I am absolutely sure the Russian side is going to cooperate,” said Migranyan, director of the New York-based Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, in an interview. “But Russia needs some security guarantees. Not guarantees about dominance, but about its own security.” Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev disclosed the move to close the base in Moscow yesterday after receiving a Russian pledge for more than $2 billion in economic assistance.

An Army contractor is facing up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to manslaughter in the shooting death of a handcuffed Taliban fighter. Don M. Ayala, 46, of New Orleans, was on patrol in Afghanistan in November when an Afghan man tossed burning fuel on Ayala’s colleague, Paula Loyd, 36. Ayala helped arrest the attacker, but when he learned how badly Loyd had been hurt, he shot her attacker in the head. Loyd died two months later.Unknown attackers on Wednesday torched 10 trucks stranded in Pakistan by the bombing of a key supply line bridge into Afghanistan.Militants released 30 police and paramilitary officers they kidnapped late Tuesday after surrounding a police station in the Swat Valley, also in the volatile northwest.US army contractor pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to murder charges after he shot dead an Afghan who had set fire to a US civilian colleague, court documents showed.The guilty plea could bring a prison term of up to 15 years for the defendant, civilian Don Michael Ayala, who was employed by Strategic Analysis Inc., a subcontractor working for the US Department of Defense in Afghanistan.Ayala was on patrol with two of his colleagues and a team of soldiers "distributing candy and speaking with villagers" in a town in southern Kandahar province November 4 when an Afghan national tossed flammable liquid on a female colleague and set her on fire, court documents said.The blaze caused "second and third degree burns over approximately sixty percent or more of her body."After a brief chase, Ayala and others apprehended the suspect, Abdul Salam, handcuffed him and briefly interrogated him.When Ayala learned that his colleague had been badly burned, he "pushed his pistol against Salam's head and shot him, killing him instantly," according to the documents.In his plea, lawyers said Ayala "unlawfully and intentionally killed" the Afghan national in the "heat of passion and without malice."The female colleague died January 7 of her injuries, the court said.

"With the reduction of violence in Iraq, foreign militants were now flooding into Afghanistan to join Taliban insurgents battling Afghan and international troops, the Afghan defence minister said on Wednesday. There was a 33 percent rise in insurgent attacks in Afghanistan in 2008, according to NATO-led forces. Violence is expected to rise further in 2009 as Washington prepares to send up to 25,000 more troops into new areas of the southern Pashtun heartlands. Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said there were about 15,000 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan but their numbers were being swelled by foreign insurgents moving in from Iraq, where violence has fallen after a U.S. troop 'surge' and other measures. 'Since last year, as the result of the success of the surge in Iraq, there has been a flow of foreign terrorists into Afghanistan,' Wardak told a news conference. 'There have been engagements ... in 2008, and in some of these engagements, actually 60 percent of the total force which we have encountered were foreign fighters,' he said."

female inmate being held in a federal prison in Brooklyn was carrying handwritten notes referring to a “mass casualty attack” and listing the Brooklyn Bridge and other New York landmarks when she was detained in Afghanistan, prosecutors said Tuesday.In an attempted-murder indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors for the first time publicly named some of the landmarks. The others: the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Empire State Building and Plum Island, a disease research complex in Long Island Sound.Aafia Siddiqui, who has remained in a federal detention center in Brooklyn suffering from bullet wounds, had notes “that referred to a ‘mass casualty attack’” and to “the construction of dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons and other explosives,” the indictment said. “These notes also discussed the mortality rates associated with certain of these weapons and explosives.”Other documents “referred to specific ‘cells’ and ‘attacks’ by certain ‘cells’ ... and discussed recruitment and training,” the papers said.Siddiqui, who has a biology degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was to be arraigned yesterday on charges that she tried to assault and kill Army officers and FBI agents during an interrogation following her detention in July. The indictment alleges she picked up a soldier’s rifle, announced her “desire to kill Americans” and fired the rifle but missed. She was wounded by return fire.Defense attorney Elizabeth Fink declined Tuesday to comment on the indictment. Her client previously denied the charges.Authorities had earlier identified Siddiqui as an al-Qaida associate who may have helped potential terrorists enter the United States before vanishing in Pakistan in 2003. Her supporters, who have held rallies in Pakistan, maintain she was kidnapped and held in U.S. custody before mysteriously surfacing this summer in Afghanistan.The indictment contains no charges of terrorism. A government official briefed on the case has told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the landmarks were a “wish list” of potential targets but that there was no evidence of a credible plot.If convicted, Siddiqui, 36, faces up to 20 years in prison.