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100+ Iraqi casualties; BP to increase Rumaila field production; 6 NATO dead in Afghanistan; Clinton in Pakistan

A suicide bomber targeting militiamen killed 43 people and wounded 40 more in the district of Radwaniyah west of Baghdad on Sunday in Iraq's deadliest single attack in more than two months. The fighters from the Sahwa (Awakening) militia were queuing outside an army base to receive their wages when the bomber struck. A second suicide bombing targeted the militia on Sunday in the town of Al-Qaim close to the Syrian border. In a third attack on Sunday, a magnetic bomb placed on a civilian vehicle killed one person and wounded three in Ur, a mixed neighbourhood of east Baghdad.

Four people were killed in Mosul on Saturday. Two mortar rounds landed in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone government and diplomatic district. A bomb attached to a car killed two brothers and wounded their father in Tuz Khurmato. Attacks and shootings killed 18 persons on Thursday and Friday in the towns of Mahmudiya, Tikrit, Sulaiman Pek, Haswa and Baghdad.

Oil major BP, along with its partner China National Petroleum Corp., plans to increase production from Iraq's Rumaila oil field by more than 100,000 barrels a day at the beginning of next year, a BP executive said Sunday. Two oil licensing auctions last year awarded 11 deals to international oil companies that promise to add nearly 10 million barrels a day of capacity to Iraq's existing 2.5 million barrels a day by 2017. The Rumaila field, with some 17 billion proven oil reserves, is currently producing 1.07 million barrels a day. Under the terms of the deal, awarded by the country last year, BP holds a 38% stake in the venture, while CNPC has 37% and Iraq's state-run South Oil Co. the remaining 25%. The three contractors will receive a fixed fee of $2 for each additional barrel of oil produced from Rumaila.

A suicide bomber on a bicycle detonated explosives in central Kabul Sunday, injuring up to five people. Taliban guerrillas staged a series of raids in Farah Sunday, blowing up the gate of a jail and freeing 23 insurgent prisoners. A roadside bomb killed a police officer and an Afghan civilian in the southern city of Kandahar on Sunday and another policeman was short on Saturday evening.

A U.S. soldier was killed by a bomb on Sunday. Two British soldiers and 2 Americans are among five NATO troops killed in Afghanistan by IEDs on Friday and Saturday.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Islamabad Sunday for high-level deliberations with Pakistani leaders and a raft of initiatives to help Pakistan, to be funded by $500 million in American economic aid. Meanwhile, Pakistan announced that it plans to buy two nuclear reactors from China — a deal that alarms the United States because it is cloaked in secrecy and is being conducted outside the global nonproliferation regime.

Mrs. Clinton has brought a shopping-bag full of commitments for Pakistan, drawn from the $7.5 billion in non-military aid, over five years, pledged by Congress last year. Many Pakistanis blame the American-led war in Afghanistan for fomenting anti-Pakistan terrorism. A coalition of protest groups issued a statement Sunday, timed to Mrs. Clinton’s arrival, which calls for an end to the war in Afghanistan and for Americans and Pakistanis who are involved in clandestine air strikes on Pakistani targets to be tried for war crimes. posted 18 July, 2010

13 US, 7 UK casualties in 24 hours; Oil tankers torched; Saddamists handed over

The U.S. suffered 13 casualties and the British 7 more in Operation Enduring Disaster during the past 24 hours.

Three American troops, an Afghan police officer and five civilians were killed on Tuesday in an attack on the Afghan Civil Order Police headquarters in Kandahar. Another 4 soldiers were injured. The attack went on for about 20 minutes before the Afghan police and NATO troops repelled the insurgents, according to statements from NATO and from the Kandahar governor’s office.

Four GIs were killed by a roadside bomb in the south Wednesday, while a fifth died the same day of wounds from a gunbattle. Three other Americans died late Tuesday in a Taliban attack on a police headquarters in Kandahar. Five civilians also died during the attack. At least one more U.S. soldier was seriously injured.

An Afghan soldier attacked and killed 3 British soldiers and wounded 4 more on Tuesday in the district of Nahr-e-Saraj in northern Helmand. This was at least the third time that British forces were deliberately shot at by an Afghan comrade. The killed fled the scene and his motives are unknown. In a separate attack in the Marja district of Helmand Province, a roadside bomb exploded Tuesday afternoon as a minivan was passing, killing nine civilians, including three children.

An attack on NATO oil tankers in Pabbi near Peshawar, Pakistan on Tuesday left scores of vehicles burned.

Pakistani police and soldiers raided houses in the north western city of Peshawar and several surrounding villages, rounding up hundreds of men accused of links with the Taliban.

The US handed over 29 detained members of Saddam's former regime, including ex-FM Tariq Aziz on Tuesday to Iraqi officials. More than 5,000 Iraqis remain in U.S. prisons. The latest transfers come ahead of the end of American control of Camp Cropper at Baghdad's international airport.

Tariq Aziz first gained notoriety in 1990 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. He continued to promote Hussein's views to the international community in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Fluent in English and well educated, the former foreign minister came to symbolize Hussein's regime in the West. He was Iraq's most senior Christian official. In March 2009, an Iraqi court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for his role in the 1992 execution of 42 merchants who had been accused of price-fixing. posted 14 July, 2010

"Fun to kill" General nominated to CENTCOM; 8 more US dead; Germany pulling out; 102 dead in Pakistan

U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis - if he wins presidential and Senate approval - will move from being the outgoing commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command to leading the U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

In 2005, while discussing fighting in Iraq, Lt Gen James Mattis said he liked brawling and enjoyed shooting people. "Actually, it's quite a lot of fun to fight; you know, it's a hell of a hoot. I like brawling; it's fun to shoot some people", he was caught as saying on tape, by the BBC.

Talking about Afghanistan, he said men who slapped around women for not wearing a veil had no manhood and it was fun to shoot them. The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Mike Hagee, later issued a statement saying he had counselled Gen Mattis on his remarks.

A large explosion rocked the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Saturday, wounding two German soldiers. An Australian soldier was killed in a separate attack during the night.

Eleven tribesmen died and three people, including a child, were wounded in the ambush of their minibus in Chamkani district. A NATO convoy also hit an IED in eastern Afghanistan and another convoy of international troops came under attack in the northern province of Kunduz. Attackers also targeted a southern Afghan army base Saturday morning, but the government said a would-be suicide bomber was shot dead and no soldiers were hurt.

Six American soldierss and at least a dozen civilians died in attacks Saturday in Afghanistan's volatile east and south. one U.S. service member died as a result of small-arms fire, another died following a roadside bombing and a third was killed during an insurgent attack in separate incidents in eastern Afghanistan. Two other U.S. troops died in separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan. The Pentagon also announced the deaths of two more Americans on Friday from wounds suffered in Afghanistan. Their deaths raised to 25, the number of American troops killed already in July.

The German Foreign Minister says the country aims to begin handing over responsibility for security for Afghanistan's northern provinces to local forces next year. Guido Westerwelle said Afghanistan cannot be stabilized by military or humanitarian means alone, but requires a political solution.

In Iraq, Turkish warplanes bombed the village of Sidakan in IRaq near the Iranian border Saturday, injuring one Iraqi. Eed al Namis, Chief of Qayara police survived an assassination attempt, Saturday, when armed men opened fire upon his motorcade in Qayara district, south Mosul. A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Ameriyat al Fallujah, 30 km to the south of the city of Fallujah, killing one policeman and seriously injuring three others.

The death toll from a suicide bombing and car bomb blast that devastated a Pakistani tribal town has soared to 102 in one of the country’s deadliest attacks, officials said today. The explosions targeted a busy market in Yakaghund town in Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt yesterday, destroying government buildings and shops and leaving victims buried under the rubble. Officials said the toll could rise further as rescue work was underway to recover victims who are feared trapped under pulverised buildings. posted 10 July, 2010

5 US casualties; US "friendly fire" kills 5 Afghans; Spy games in Pakistan

Two U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan, a day after NATO forces bombed Afghan soldiers in "friendly fire". One American was killed when a rocket fired by insurgents landed in the Asmar district outpost. The other casualty was caused by an IED in southern Afghanistan. Three more soldiers were injured. A British soldier was killed on Tuesday.

Britain is to withdraw its 1,000 troops from the Sangin region of Afghanistan where they have suffered heavy losses and allow US forces to take charge there, Defence Secretary Liam Fox announced yesterday.

Five Afghan soldiers died in a botched Nato airstrike after they were mistaken for insurgents yesterday. The friendly fire incident took place before dawn on Wednesday, apparently mistaking an army outpost in the east of the country for an insurgent group. "Nato aircraft bombed and martyred five of our soldiers," an Afghan defence ministry spokesman said. "We condemn this incident and regret that this is not the first time such an incident has occurred. We hope it is the last time."

Six Afghans were killed and nine wounded when a rocket fired by insurgents hit a bazaar in southeastern Paktia province on Thursday. Three Afghan army soldiers were killed and nine wounded in two separate attacks in southern Afghanistan. Gunmen shot and killed a senior Afghan police intelligence chief - Mohammad Gul - and his bodyguard Thursday as he returned home from his office in Kabul.

In Baghdad, bombs killed at least 12 people on Thursday, the final day of a Shiite religious festival that brought as many as 1 million pilgrims to the capital to worship at the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim. On Wednesday, five people were killed by bombs. The attacks come after the Tuesday bombings across Baghdad killed at least 40 pilgrims and injured more than 100.

The Washington Post reports that the U.S. CIA and Pakistan's ISI secret agents are locked in agressive spy battles. Last year, a Pakistani man approached CIA officers in Islamabad, offering to give up secrets of his country's nuclear program. To prove he was a trustworthy source, the man claimed he had spent nuclear fuel rods. But suspicious CIA officers quickly concluded that Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, was trying to run a double agent against them.

An ISI official denied that the agency runs double agents to collect information about the CIA's activities. He said the two agencies have a good working relationship and such allegations were meant to create friction between them. But the CIA became so concerned by a rash of cases involving suspected double agents in 2009, it re-examined the spies it had on the payroll in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Pakistan has its own worries about the Americans. During the first term of the Bush administration, Pakistan became enraged after it shared intelligence with the U.S., only to learn the CIA station chief passed that information to the British. posted 08 July, 2010

12 more NATO casualties; 62 new Iraqi casualties; "Blizzard of banknotes" leave Kabul; Fighting in Turkey

During the past two days there were an additional 12 NATO casualties in Afghanistan, including 5 dead U.S. and 2 UK soldiers and 5 injured. Two Americans died in the west, two in the south and one in the east. A British soldier was killed in a blast in souther Helmand province and another died in a hospital in Britain from wounds suffered earlier, the Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday. Already in July, 15 U.S. and international troops have already died in Operation Enduring Disaster. An additional 19 have been injured.

Pentagon planners predict that the casualty toll for July may even surpass that of June - the deadliest month of the war for U.S. and international forces at 103 killed, including 60 Americans.

Five Afghan army soldiers were killed in two separate explosions in western Herat province and southern Helmand on Monday. Three insurgents were killed while planting a land mine in northern Kunduz. Afghan security forces killed four insurgents in a clash on Tuesday in Maidan Wardak province.

The Afghan Interior Ministry reported on Tuesday that a three-day weekend operation was conducted jointly by Afghan anti-narcotics police and international security forces left 64 "terrorists" dead and yielded some 37,000 pounds of narcotics.

In Iraq, a suicide bomber blew herself up at the entrance to government offices in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday killing at least four people and leaving 23 more injured. A roadside bomb targeting Shi'ite pilgrims in northeastern Baghdad wounded five people on Monday. A mortar round or rocket landed near an apartment block in Baghdad's Green Zone government and diplomatic enclave, wounding three people. A roadside bomb went off near a police patrol, wounding three people, including a policeman, in Baghdad's Bayaa district. Bombings in Shirqat wounded 17 people. There were eight casualties in Mosul.

15 people died in fresh clashes inside Turkey, near the Iraq border. According to the written statement issued by the Turkish military, militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, attacked a military post Monday night near Beyyurdu village of Hakkari province. Three soldiers and 11 militants were killed during the clashes and 3 soldiers were wounded. Earlier the same night, Kurdish rebels opened fire on the security forces near Bukardi village of Elazig province and wounded six Turkish soldiers while one militant was killed.

A Daily Scotsman investigation finds that a "blizzard of banknotes" - at least $4.2 billion - left the Afghan airport over the last three-and-a-half years. US and British fraud investigators fear that most of the money leaving Kabul has been siphoned-off from international aid contracts, or made from the country's rapidly expanding opium trade. A U.S. Congressional investigation titled "Warlords Inc" warned the military was inadvertently funding the insurgency through private security companies who pay-off local power brokers to drive supplies through their territory. It said a $2.16 billion logistics contract was fuelling "warlordism, extortion, and corruption."

The sheer volume of cash couriered out of the country's main airport is huge relative to Afghanistan's gross domestic product which was just $13.5bn last year, and it easily dwarfs the amount of tax revenue collected by the government. The figure doesn't include cash exported from any of Afghanistan's other international airports, which include Kandahar International, Mazar-e Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, and the main US base at Bagram, north of Kabul.

A day after a suicide attack on a paramilitary base in Northwestern Pakistan, the security forces killed at least 23 militants in an operation and also claimed arresting a key Taliban commander of outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during an operation in Lower Dir district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa province. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) destroyed two more primary schools in Khar District of Bajaur Agency in the restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on Tuesday. posted 06 July, 2010

242 casualties in Lahore; USAID in Kunduz attacked; 3 US soldiers dead; House Dems vote for war; Turks continue strikes on Iraqi villages

Pakistani police are on high alert after a twin suicide bombing attack on an Islamic shrine in Lahore, Pakistan on Thursday evening left at least 42 people dead and another 200 injured. Police said one suicide bomber set off his device in an area where people sleep before visiting the Data Darbar shrine and a second person exploded a bomb near an upper-level gate. The site of the blasts was a shrine that holds the remains of Abul Hassan Ali Hajvery, an 11th-century Sufi saint who is revered for contributions to the spread of Islam in South Asia. Thousands of people were at the centuries-old shrine at the time of the blasts, which engulfed the site in a huge cloud of smoke and left the white marble floor splattered with blood, body parts and people’s belongings

The site of the blasts was a shrine that holds the remains of Abul Hassan Ali Hajvery, an 11th-century Sufi saint who is revered for contributions to the spread of Islam in South Asia. Hundreds of thousands of people visit Data Darbar each year. More than 5,000 people, mostly followers of the saint, staged a protest rally in Lahore after Muslim Friday prayers and similar demonstrations were held in other cities across the country. Most bazaars and markets remained closed and large numbers of police were on patrol in Lahore, considered a playground for Pakistan’s elite and home to many top brass in the military and intelligence community.

Six suicide bombers stormed a USAID compound in northern Afghanistan before dawn Friday, killing at least four people and wounding several others. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which began about 3:30 a.m. in Kunduz when a suicide car bomber blew a hole in the wall around a building used by Development Alternatives Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based global consulting company on contract with the United States Agency for International Aid (USAID). At least five other attackers then ran inside the building, killing or wounding security guards and others inside before dying in a gunbattle with Afghan security forces who raced to the scene.

Separately, NATO on Friday reported the deaths of two coalition service members. One was an American who died Friday in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. The other was a Royal Marine who died Thursday in southern Afghanistan.

Two U.S. soldiers died in separate incidents in Iraq on Friday, according to the military.

Also in Iraq, a roadside bomb wounded four Shiites on their way to prayer Friday morning in Firdaws Square, Sadoun Street, Baghdad. A sticky bomb stuck to the car of Abdulkereem Muhammed, member of the new parliament for the secular Iraqiya bloc, detonated in Bagdad's Dawoodi neighbourhood. Turkey continued to bombard Iraqi villages on Friday. Six fighter aircraft violated Kurdistan region airspace early Friday, and bombarded three villages in Pishdar district, causing great material damages to homes, farms and livestock. posted 02 July, 2010

Vietnam 1966-7 doesn't stop Congress from wasting more dollars; Petraeus unanimously confirmed; Taliban attack bases; Paks get F-16s

In June, 102 foreign soldiers were killed in the Afghan war, making it the deadliest month for NATO in nine years of conflict. So far this year 322 troops have been killed, compared to 520 for all of 2009. In Washington, generals and politicians continue to claim that they are "on track" to "win" the war, despite all evidence to the contrary. The proportional number of troop casualities in Afghanistan is similar to Vietnam in 1966-67. Pentagon planners expect the 2011 casualty figures to increase by a third. As of Tuesday, June 22, 2010, at least 4409 members of the US military had died in Iraq since the long war began.

Even as millions of Americans lose unemployment benefits, state and local agencies cut back on personnel and schools reduce services, members of Congress - including Democrats and Republicans - are expected to approve another $33 Billion for war. General Petraeus, whose appointment as the supreme commander for military operations in Afghan was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, stated, "we are determined to achieve progress in coming months," as he bried alliance leaders.

NATO forces in Afghanistan said Thursday they had killed a "large number" of Taliban fighters and captured a rebel chieftain after a raid on an insurgent hideout in the southern province of Helmand. Troops called in air support during running gunbattles in the province's troubled Baghran district which erupted after rebels attacked soldiers moving in on the compound with machine guns and rockets.

Militants stormed a NATO air base in Afghanistan Wednesday but coalition forces repelled the attack. The attack on a base near Jalalabad involved a car bomb and rocket-propelled grenades but coalition casualties were limited to two wounded soldiers, NATO said. At least eight attackers, believed to be Taliban, were killed. Four rockets were also launched toward the construction site in Charikar, the capital of northern Parwan province, used by civilian Korean construction workers.

Meanwhile in Iraq, a bomb placed under a car destroyed several in Baghdad's western Adil neighborhood, woulding 3 people. Two roadside bombs killed one civilian and wounded seven people, including three Iraqi soldiers, in Baghdad's western Yarmouk district. Turkish forces fired 12 artillery shells into the village of Bidawi in northern Iraq. No casualties were reported.

A roadside bomb went off near a police patrol, wounding four policemen late on Wednesday in Tuz Khurmato. Gunmen using weapons equipped with silencers shot dead on Wednesday an off-duty police captain in front of his house in central Kirkuk. A 13-year-old girl was killed on Wednesday when a bomb went off near her house in eastern Mosul.

Pakistan has taken delivery of its first batch of F-16 combat aircraft, despite being one of the poorest nations in the world with millions of hungry people. The aircraft, equipped to drop laser- and satellite-guided bombs, are part of a $1.4 billion deal with U.S. manufacturer Lockheed Martin. On Wednesday, a Pakistani government official said fighter jets bombed suspected militant hide-outs in a new assault on an Afghan tribal region where the army had previously declared victory. He said at least 20 people have died in the Orakzai tribal region.

Bent on bolstering its military, and preparing for WWIIII, India announced plans recently to spend up to $30 billion on its military by 2012. posted 01 July, 2010

Iraq inquiry continues; Hundreds of Kurds flee; Angry protests in Kabul; June deadliest month for occupation

Britain's public inquiry into the Iraq war has invited international lawyers to comment on the government's decision to join the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, its chairman said on Tuesday. The inquiry, chaired by former civil servant John Chilcot, was set up last year by Blair's successor Gordon Brown. The five-person panel resumed public hearings on Tuesday after a break to cover the period of last month's election when Labour lost power to a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

The panel traveled to France and the United States last month to hold talks with officials including former U.S. diplomat Paul Bremer who governed Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority after Saddam was toppled. Britain has withdrawn its soldiers from Iraq but has around 9,500 troops fighting in Afghanistan. Chilcot said on Tuesday that his panel had held a private meeting with U.S. General David Petraeus during his visit to Britain earlier this month. Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix is expected to appear before the inquiry at some point over the next month.

A series of bombings around Iraq Tuesday claimed 13 lives, including four policemen, a Baghdad provincial council official, an Iraqi army general and an eight-year-old girl.

Turkish warplanes bombed northern Iraq again on Monday. Hundreds of Iraqi-Kurds have fled their villages and swelled the internally displaced persons (IDP camps) inside Kurdistan. Both the Turkish and Iranian bombings of Iraq seem to have tacit approval from Washington.

Hundreds of angry protestor shook Kabul on Tuesday as Afghans chanted "end the U.S. occupation." Seven Afghan police officers were injured in the rock-throwing melee that broke out hours later in the neighborhood.

A brazen daylight assault near the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital raises concerns about U.S. strategy. Assailants riddled a United Nations vehicle with bullets at a busy traffic circle in the heart of Kabul on Tuesday, killing an Afghan staffer

On Monday, eight Afghans were killed -- including a father and four sons -- in a pre-dawn raid by ISAF soldiers in southern Kandahar province. Eight Afghan civilians, including women and children, were killed on Monday when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle southwest of Kabul.

Five members ISAF were killed in two separate attacks on Sunday, the alliance said, including four Norwegian soldiers in one roadside bomb attack in Faryab province. Afghan and ISAF forces clashed with Taliban insurgents on Monday in an area of eastern Kunar province where both sides suffered some casualties a day earlier. June 2010 is now the most deadly month of the nine-year Afghanistan war, with more than 100 NATO troops killed.

Ten people were killed in a U.S. drone missile attack in Pakistan's north-western tribal areas bordering Afghanistan on Tuesday. Two missiles destroyed a compound in Ghwakhwa area of South Waziristan. posted 29 June, 2010

 

2 US, 2 Canadian, 1 UK dead in Afghan war; US drone strike in Pakistan kills 5

Afghans killed two U.S., 2 Canadian and 1 more British soldier as Afghans continue their opposition to the 9 year long invasion and occupation of their country. Meanwhile, pundits and politicians in the U.S. continue to debate "what is best for Afghanistan".

Two U.S. service members died Sunday following a gun attack by militants in eastern Afghanistan. The British soldier died on Saturday, two weeks after being wounded by an explosion in southern Afghanistan. Canada reported that two of its medic were killed on Saturday southwest of Kandahar when their vehicle stuck an IED. So far in June, 93 NATO soldiers have been killed and more than 150 wounded.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said on Sunday that making progress in Afghanistan is both “harder” and going more slowly than anticipated. “There are some serious problems” in Afghanistan, Panetta said. He also stated that al-Qaeda probably has between 50-100 warriors in Afghanistan. Most of the fighting is coming from Afghans.

Fifteen insurgents were killed on Saturday by the premature explosion of a bomb they were assembling at a mosque in southeastern Paktika. A premature explosion of a mine killed four insurgents in southern Helmand. Two Afghan civilians were killed and five wounded on Saturday when a suicide bomber tried to target the acting governor of southern Uruzgan province.

As the war continues to spiral out of control and downhill, the Obama administration is considering more major shakeups to the Pentagon command and the diplomatic corps. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and RichardHolbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and others could be out by the end of the year.

In Iraq, gunmen shot dead a man walking down a street in western Mosul. Gunmen shot dead a man walking down a street in western Mosul. A policeman was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his car exploded in Haifa Street in central Baghdad. A sticky bomb attached to a car wounded an employee of the Education Ministry in Baghdad's western district of Khaddar. Ten people were killed and six wounded on Saturday in Baghdad, Mosul, Abu Ghraib and Fallujah.

A U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan killed at least 5 persons on Sunday. The home struck by two U.S. missiles Sunday was located in the village of Tabbi Tolkhel, a little over a mile northeast of Miran Shah. posted 27 June, 2010

Scores dead in Iraq; NATO supplies torched; 2 more US troops die in "deadliest month" in Afghanistan

Protests continued in Iraq on Friday over the poor electrical infrastructure as temperatures soared to 120 degrees all week. While American occupation forces swim in clean swimming pools and have 24x7 air conditioning, Iraqis - rich and poor - suffer from less than 6 hours of electricity per day - despite Washington's promise to rebuild the country. Hundreds of Iraqis protested power cuts in Nasiriyah and elsewhere.

Violence also continued throughout Iraq on Friday. A roadside bomb exploded near a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims in Muqdadiya, 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, wounding two people including one pilgrim. A roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol wounding four people, including two soldiers, in eastern Mosul. Iraqi security forces found 11 decomposed bodies in two separate water wells in a remote area to the south west of Samara. A bomb planted in the car of an off-duty army officer wounded him and another civilian in northwestern Baghdad. A roadside bomb exploded late on Thursday in the Amiriya district of western Baghdad, wounding four Iraqis. A bomb attached to a car wounded five people late on Thursday in Baghdad's Utaifiya district and two more in the Zayouna district. A suicide bomber blew himself up as police closed in on him in Khaldiya.

A bomb on Friday damaged the perimeter wall of the Nabi Yunes mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, revered by Christians as the burial place of the Biblical prophet Jonah. The large mosque, built on the site of an earlier church, sits on a hill that marks one of the two main settlement mounds of ancient Nineveh, in the eastern part of modern Mosul. It lies not far from the surviving walls and gates of the great Assyrian city constructed at the turn of the 7th century BC. No one was injured in the bombing.

Several oil tankers, used to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan, were torched overnight in Peshawar, Pakistan. During June at least 60 NATO supplying container trucks were burned down to ashes near the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

Two U.S. troops were reported dead in Afghanistan as the surge to nowhere continued. On soldier died an insurgent attack Friday in eastern Afghanistan and another American died following a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan on Thursday. Their deaths brought to 82 the number of international service members killed so far in June, which is already the deadliest month of the nearly 9-year-old war. Forty-eight were Americans. NATO pledges to "stay the course" despite the failures of Operation Enduring Disaster.

In the south, a joint force of Afghan and international troops killed a midlevel Taliban commander and other insurgents Thursday who were planting a roadside bomb near the provincial capital of Kandahar. Some of the insurgents were killed by a coalition airstrike, NATO said. The bodies of 11 men, some beheaded, were found in the Bagh Char area of Khas Uruzgan district. posted 25

Gen. McCrystal out, but war rolls on; Six NATO soldiers dead; 5 Americans convicted of terrorism

Although General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in charge of all American and British troops in Afghanistan, was sacked yesterday by President Obama, the war continues to roll on with no end in site with the new regime. General Petraeus will take over in Afghanistan. Australia announced that its troops are expected to remain at least through 2012. Six more NATO soldiers were killed on Wednesday in Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who has worked as second-in-command in Iraq in 2008, is set to take over for current commander Gen. Ray Odierno when his normal rotation ends in September. The spinning wheels of war contines.

Afghan and foreign troops killed 20 Taliban fighters in a raid in eastern Nuristan province on Wednesday. A roadside bomb killed seven Afghan guards working for a local construction firm in southern Uruzgan province.

At least 12 people were killed and 16 more wounded in attacks in Iraq today. Three suicide bombers killed five police and army personnel and wounded nine others in two separate attacks in Iraq's northern city of Mosul on Thursday. The first attack occurred when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a police checkpoint, killing four policemen and wounding four others. Two other suicide bombers attacked the main gate of an Iraqi army base in eastern Mosul, killing one soldier and wounding five. On Wednesday, five people were killed in Mosul. Two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near a convoy carrying a newly-elected member of the Iraqi parliament from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI) near the town of Tuz Khurmato.

A Pakistan court convicted five American men on terror charges Thursday and sentenced each to 10 years in prison. The five young Muslims from the Washington, D.C., area, were arrested in Pakistan in December after their families reported them missing. The case is one of several involving alleged "homegrown" American militants linked to Pakistan, but the only one being tried in a Pakistani court.

The CIA has hired Xe Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, to guard its facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere in a new $100 million contract. posted 24 June, 2010

Violence continues in Iraq; McCrystal on the carpet; Holbrooke narrowly escapes Marjah

Iraq's electricity minister resigned on Monday after protests over power cuts that afflict the country. Minister Karim Waheed told Iraqiya state television he was resigning because of the government's failure to provide enough power, seven years after the U.S. invasion (None of the Americans responsible for reconstruction have been fired or resigned). Iraq's cabinet met on Tuesday to try and find a solution to the bloody protest which they fear could cause further violence.

In Baghdad's al-Dora district on Tuesday, a roadside bomb targeting a Transport Ministry official killed two people and wounded seven others. A roadside bomb exploded near a convoy of SUVs belonging to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), a powerful Shi'ite political party. Eight people were wounded, including six inside the vehicles. Eight Iraqis were wounded when a motorbike loaded with explosives detonated near an Iraqi army patrol near Baqouba. Five people were killed and four injured Tuesday in separate attacks in the city of Mosul.

US commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal has been ordered to the White House to personally explain his criticism of the president and his senior advisers. Apparently, many still forget that the Pentagon is not the seat of U.S. government. In a profile in the magazine Rolling Stone, McChrystal jokes sarcastically about Vice President Joe Biden for his skepticism of the commander's war strategy, and imagined ways of "dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner." McChrystal also told the magazine that he felt "betrayed" by the US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, in a White House debate over war strategy last year. A McChrystal aide also called the national security adviser, Jim Jones, a retired general, a "clown" who is "stuck in 1985."

The Pentagon "strategy" for Operation Enduring Disaster continues to be twarted by Afghans who oppose the foreign military occupation. Poland's interim president says he will end Poland's military mission in Afghanistan in 2012 if he wins a runoff election. Gunfire broke out as President Obama's special envoy to the region, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, arrived in Marjah on Tuesday. Several insurgents shot at the V-22 aircraft carrying the Holbrooke. Less than a minute after Holbrooke left, a huge explosion rocked Marja's Government Center. Marines have been fighting in Marjah for four months but have barely pacified this small village. With such difficulty, the Pentagon is worried that it would never be able to capture a large city like Kandahar without completely destroying it, similiar to Fallujah in Iraq.

Poland's interim president says he will end Poland's military mission in Afghanistan in 2012 if he wins a runoff election. Britain's special envoy to Afghanistan, known for his skepticism about the western war effort and his support for peace talks with the Taliban, has stepped down. Another British marine has been killed in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence confirmed on Tuesday. posted 22 June, 2010

16 troop casualties; UK Afghan toll hits 300; UN pulling out; Electricity protests continue in Iraq

Three Australians and one American died, and seven more Australian troops were injured Monday in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan.
The crash occurred while coalition choppers were flying close to one another to secure the Kandahar. Four American soldiers and another NATO troop were killed in separate bombings in other parts of Afghanistan on Monday. At least 62 NATO troops have been killed in Afghanistan this month, including 41 Americans, making it the deadliest month for the U.S.-led coalition this year.

Top Obama administration officials Sunday continued their propaganda campaign to paint a more positive picture of progress in the Afghanistan conflict. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told "Fox News Sunday" that "we are making progress" in Afghanistan. "So I think there's a rush to judgment, frankly," Gatessaid, "that loses sight of the fact we are still in the middle of getting all of the right components into place and giving us a little time to have this work," - even after fighting in Afghanistan for nine years.

Britain announced its 300th death in Afghanistan on Monday. The grim landmark comes during a year which has already seen the second-highest number of British fatalities since operations began in 2001 -- 55 -- and amid signs that most Britons want troops to be pulled out. Prime Minister Cameron said Britain was "paying a high price" in Afghanistan and that people "should keep asking why we are there and how long we must be there". The financial cost to British taxpayers of their part in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 has passed £20 billion, according to British officials. Professor Malcolm Chalmers, a defense analyst with the Royal United Services Institute, calculates that about 30% of the UK's total defense budget is currently devoted to operations in Afghanistan.

U.N. officials say are withdrawing some of their 300 international staff in Afghanistan because of increasing security threats. U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said Monday the plan is to move people who can do their work elsewhere — mainly clerical and administrative staff — to a more secure location as the violence in Afghanistan continues to escalate.

A suicide bombing in a marketplace in Sharqat, Iraq, killed eight people, including six police officers, and wounded 16 others late Sunday night. Six Iraqis were wounded when explosives attached to a motorbike detonated in a market in Baiji on Monday. A man was shot and killed in Mosul.

Hundreds of angry protesters hurled stones at provincial council offices in southern Iraq on Monday, wounding 17 police amid growing rage over power rationing in the summer heat. The police, who included a lieutenant colonel, were all admitted to hospital after the frenzied protest outside the Dhi Qar provincial headquarters in the city of Nasiriyah. Anger has been growing over rationing that sees Iraqis receive power for just one hour in five in temperatures that have been topping 122 degrees Fahrenheit across the centre and south of the country for days. Americans still claim that they have "progressed" with reconstruction, but seven years after the U.S. invasion there is still barely any more electricity than when Saddam was in power.

Demonstrators said they did not believe the government's explanation that years of UN sanctions against now executed dictator Saddam Hussein's regime followed by the US-led invasion of 2003 and its violent aftermath meant there was insufficient generator capacity to provide more power. "We are fed up with the dishonest promises about improving the electricity," said one resident. They promised to give us eight hours of electricity per day but we only receive four." Dhi Qar province has one of Iraq's biggest power stations with four units with a nominal total capacity of 840 megawatts. But it is only running at half that for want of fuel, and what electricity it does generate is all transmitted to other provinces through the national grid.

A dozen militants ambushed a Pakistani military patrol in Kasha village in Orakzai, Monday, killing three soldiers and sparking deadly clashes that left eight militants dead. posted 21 June, 2010

US, Israeli, Iran war ships; Turkey bombs Iraq; Basra police kill protestors; 3 more US dead; US strike kills Pakistanis

As belligerants prepare for WWIII, the U.S., Israel and Iran are maneuvering warships into place. More than twelve U.S. and Israeli warships, including an aircraft carrier, passed through the Suez Canal on Friday and are headed for the Red Sea. Retired Egyptian General Amin Radi, says “the decision to declare war on Iran is not easy, and Israel, due to its wild nature, may start a war just to remain the sole nuclear power in the region. Iran announced that it plans to send ships through the Suez Canal in the other direction, from the Persian Gulf into the Mediterranean.

The U.S. Congress is poised to approve the largest budget for war since WWII and Russia, China, India, Turkey, Korea and Japan, in addition to NATO country defense ministers, are on alert to a growing list of flashpoints that could trigger a global conflagration. In addition to the coming attack on Iran, North Korea, the former USSR 'stans' such as Kyrgyzstan and a possible oil crisis are signs that U.S.-led militarism since 2001 is leading to a global destabilization and more war.

Turkish warplanes bombed the hideouts of Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on Saturday and sent more troops into Iraq overnight (Turkey already has a series of bases inside Iraq) after the rebel attack on a Turkish military outpost on the border. It was the second time in five days that Turkish ground forces had crossed the border. Many "rebels" were killed in the incursion into the Qandil mountainsOn Wednesday, Turkish troops crossed from Sirnak province into Dohuk province.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a funeral earlier Sunday for 11 of the soldiers in the southeastern city of Van, said: "They will never win. They will obtain nothing. They will drown in their own blood." An Iraqi Kurdish official on Sunday said the Turkish raid killed a teenage Iraqi Kurdish girl - the first reported civilian death in sparsely populated border areas that have been often targeted by Turkish warplanes. Karmang Ezzat, mayorof the border town of Soran, said the girl's mother and 3-year-old brother also were wounded in the attack.

On Sunday, two suicide car bombers struck a crowded area outside a state-run bank in Baghdad, killing nearly 30 people and wounding 55 more in the latest attack targeting a high-profile part of the capital. The blast, which tore the glass facade off the three-story Trade Bank of Iraq building, raised fears that insurgents are stepping up attacks in a bid to foment unrest by exploiting the political deadlock following inconclusive March 7 parliamentary elections. Several dozen Iraqis were killed on Saturday.

A protest over electricity shortages in Iraq's southern port city of Basra turned deadly on Saturday when troops fatally shot a demonstrator and wounded three others, underscoring rising tension over the country's lack of basic services even after 7 years of U.S. occupation and control. Hundreds rallied outside Basra's provincial council building, demanding a more consistent electricity supply to their homes and businesses and carrying banners reading: "Return electricity to us" and "Prison is more comfortable than our homes." Police said they tried to control the crowd but protesters started throwing stones at the council building and set fire to a guard's cabin, prompting the troops to open fire.

Two bombs hidden in fruit carts exploded in Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province Sunday, killing three people, including a young girl and a woman. Another bomb exploded at a high school about three miles away injuring five people.

Three more U.S. soldiers have died in southern Afghanistan, where militants have stepped up their attacks. NATO said Friday that two of the Americans died in an insurgent attack and the third was killed by a roadside bomb. Six German soldiers were injured by roadside bombs in Chardarah district of Kunduz province Sunday morning. A French soldier died at a hospital after he and an Afghan interpreter were wounded by artillery fire from insurgents.

The United Nations reported Saturday that insurgent violence has risen sharply in Afghanistan over the last three months, with roadside bombings, complex suicide attacks and assassinations soaring over last year's levels....as America sends in more troops and says it is making "progress". Part of the company once known as Blackwater Worldwide has been awarded a more than $120 million contract to "protect" new U.S. consulates in the Afghan cities of Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday.

A U.S. missile strike killed 13 people, including 5 women, on Saturday in Haider Khel village near North Waziristan's Mir Ali town region in Pakistan as U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke met with Pakistani leaders in Islamabad. A roadside bomb aimed at police elsewhere killed a civilian and wounded eight people. Also, gunmen opened fire on police at a court in the southern city of Karachi; one police officer and an attacker were killed. posted 20 June, 2010

Pentagon whines on; Sell-out of Afghans; 100,000 Iraqis resettled; 100+ Iraqi casualties

Whiners in the Pentagon complain that the Pentagon and NATO about losing control of the "narrative" of the war amid mounting casualties, with media coverage and commentary possibly undermining public confidence that the campaign can be won. They continue to take no more responsibility for the disaster they have caused during the 9 years of Operation Enduring Disaster than Tony Hayward takes for BP's disaster in the gulf. As in BP's case, no one in the Pentagon has been fired. "This notion that there has not been progress made I think is an erroneous one," whines Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week in Brussels said he was "impatient" with media coverage that sometimes failed to convey overall progress while focusing on difficulties in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand - despite the fact that most media personnel directly serve the Pentagon as "embedded" reporters.

In other media news, the founder of whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks, says he will release a secret Pentagon video of a deadly airstrike in Afghanistan. The founder of whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks, says he will release a secret Pentagon video of a deadly airstrike on children in Afghanistan. The May 2009 airstrike on the Afghan village of Garani left as many as 140 people dead, including women and children.

Corrupt Afghan federal officials in Kabul moved swiftly on Friday to sell off people's land to foreign interests. Two hundred mining investors from around the world have been invited to a meeting in London next week where they will offer suggestions for how to develop the iron ore deposits at Hajigak. By September, the government hopes to be able to solicit expressions of interest from mining companies and perhaps by December narrow the number to five or six companies who have the capacity to undertake a large the project of mineral extraction.

However, mining "experts" forget that the land and minerals in question is not owned by the government but has been lived on by rural Afghan families for generations. Local residents believe that the only ones who will benefit will be corrupt government officials who will force the people off of the land or turn them into mining slaves. “Thousands have made sacrifices like me in their lifetime. But I am sure I won’t see any benefits from such mines in my life and neither will you in yours," said one local shopkeeper.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) chief Antonio Guterres announced on Friday the body has referred 100,000 Iraqi refugees in the Middle East for resettlement in third countries since 2007. "Lengthy security checks and the time it has taken for state processing mechanisms to be established have led to considerable delays in the departure of refugees to their new homes," he said. The acceptance rate by resettlement countries of UNHCR?s referrals now stands at 80 percent, of which nearly 76 percent have been accepted by the United States, the UNHCR said. The UN agency said that around 1.8 million Iraqis are currently seeking refuge in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey.

Meanwhile in Iraq, A car bomb targeting the house of an Iraqi police officer wounded 32 people, 20 of them women or children, in Baqouba on Friday. A parked car bomb exploded near the house of a provincial council official, killing five people and wounding 45, in Tuz Khurmato. A rocket fired at a U.S military base landed on three houses, killing four civilians and wounding seven in an eastern section of Fallujah. Gunmen stormed the house of an employee of the Water Resources Ministry, killing him, his wife and two sons in Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of Baghdad. Two people were killed in Mosul. There were four casualities on Thursday in Kirkuk, Baghdad and Fallujah.

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke arrived in Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad on Friday, where he will meet with Pakistan officials to discuss "peace and stability". posted 18 June, 2010

WWIII edges closer; 5 NATO troops dead; Gen. Betrayus hedges

The slowing creeping WWIII war, started by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, continues to destabalize the entire region and threatens to draw Russia and China directly into the conflict that has spread from Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and the former states of the USSR.

Violence in Kyrgyzstan during the past week has left 178 people dead, and left 1,866 injured. Tens of thousands of Kyrgyz have fled to neighboring Uzbekistan and China and Pakistan have evacuated hundreds of their citizens from Kyrgyzstan in recent days as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, heads to the region. Kyrgyz interim leader Roza Otunbayeva on Tuesday asked Russia to send troops to help quell the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, according to reports reaching here from the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek. The current clashes followed violence in May when supporters of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev clashed with backers of the interim government in the southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad.

In Afghanistan, five NATO troops including one American died Tuesday, continuing a grim trend that could make June among the deadliest months of the nearly 9-year-old Afghan war. Three of the NATO deaths were British — two killed in separate gunfights in southern Helmand province and a third who died in a British hospital from injuries suffered in a firefight Sunday in Helmand, according to the British government. The American service member was killed in a gunbattle in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said, and a Polish soldier died in a rocket attack on a base in the eastern province of Ghazni. Only half way through June, the death toll for the month among the NATO forces is 44, including 27 Americans.

Five Afghan policemen and the chief of the Kandahar district of Arghandab, Abdul Jabar Murghani, were also killed Tuesday when a remote-controlled bomb exploded in a car parked along his route. Taliban insurgents attacked an Afghan police post and killed five officers on Tuesday in Ghazni. Five insurgents were killed on Monday in a clash with Afghan police and foreign troops in eastern Nangarhar province. Afghan and foreign troops killed several insurgents overnight in Kapisa.

Iraq's parliament convened on Monday for the first time since a March election, cloaked by heavy security a day after gunmen and suicide bombers raided the central bank. The newly elected lawmakers met for barely 20 minutes to take their oaths of office before dispersing to continue talks. At least seven people were killed in clashes in a village near Mosul on Tuesday. Gunmen also killed an off-duty soldier and three policemen were killed in separate attacks. In Baghdad, two people were killed and five wounded in attacks on Monday.

Gen. David H. Petraeus on Tuesday hedged on Obama's promise that a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in July 2011, telling a Capitol Hill panel that such a move would be "based on conditions." "July 2011 is not the date where we race for the exits," the general told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It is the date where, having done an assessment, we begin a process of transition of tasks to Afghan security forces." Six months after President Obama decided to send more forces to Afghanistan, the halting progress in the war has crystallized longstanding tensions within the government over the viability of his plan to turn around the country and begin pulling out by July 2011. "Violence is up, and I think violence will continue to rise, particularly over the summer months," Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, NATO's Afghanistan commander, said last week. By then, there will be 100,000 pairs of American boots on the ground - more than double last summer, including three times as many Special Operations Forces.

In a radical restructuring of its military command in southern Afghanistan, NATO said on Monday it had split the country's most violent region in half in a bid to improve security by focusing on smaller geographical areas. Although the shake-up had been planned for many months, Monday's announcement marked the official start of a new Regional Command Southwest (RC-SW), reflecting the influx of thousands of new U.S. troops into the region. posted 15 June, 2010

9 NATO casualties on Saturday; Iraq Central Bank attacked; DoD goes after Wikileaks

There were 4 U.S. casualties in northern Afghanistan on Saturday. A US soldier was killed and three others were injured by an IED that flipped their vehicle while on patrol in the Zakhel area of Kunduz city. A British soldier was killed by an IED in eastern Afghanistan. One Danish soldier was killed and three other injured by an IED near the Budwan patrol base in Helmand province. So far this month, 37 NATO soldiers - mostly Americans - have died in Operation Enduring Disaster and the number of injured has passed 100.

Two Taliban commanders were killed in clash with police in Afghanistan's northern Faryab province, police said Sunday. Abombing rattled southern Kandahar city on Saturday injuring 10 people, including 3 policemen.Afghan police and foreign forces claim to have killed 39 insurgents during two separate operations in southern Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces on Friday. More than three dozen school girls were treated after becoming ill from suspected poisoning at their high school in Ghazni province.

An attack on the Iraq Central Bank in on Sunday left at least 24 people dead and more than 50 injured. The attackers stormed the bank triggering eight explosions and took hostages, prompting a siege at the bank and sending plumes of smoke over Baghdad. The first bomb went off on the road near an electrical generator. Then, insurgents wearing army uniforms tried to enter the bank through two entrances, exchanging gunfire with the guards. Iraqi security forces then stormed the building, prompting a standoff in which some of the militants who were wearing suicide vests blew themselves up.

Also in Iraq, a roadside bomb exploded near an armoured vehicle carrying Nineveh province deputy governor Faisal al-Yawir in central Mosul. Three people were killed by gunmen elsewhere in the city. A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol wounded an army officer in southern Kirkuk. A bomb targeting a police patrol wounded two policemen in Daquq.

Pakistani government air strikes killed at least 10 Taliban holdouts Saturday in Orakzai, an official said.

The Pentagon is trying to establish the whereabouts of the founder of Wikileaks, the whistle-blowing website, as it tries to stop the publication of classified documents that provide evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq. US officials want to find Julian Assange, who they believe may be in possession of documents leaked by Bradley Manning, 22, a soldier who was detained in Baghdad a week ago. Manning was detained in connection with the leak of a military video that was provided to Wikileaks and showed Apache helicopters gunning down unarmed men in Iraq, including two journalists. posted 13 June, 2010

8 US casualties in Iraq; 2 in Afghanistan; Pak Truckers to strike; US drones kill 17 in Pakistan

A suicide car bomb hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi military patrol in the town of Jalawla in eastern Iraq on Friday, killing two U.S. soldiers and at least four Iraqis. Six U.S. soldiers and around 24 other people were wounded. While Washington claims that U.S. forces have pulled out of cities, the military continues active patrols in these cities from their bases outside leaving Iraqis with a feeling of continuing occuption. Attacks against U.S. forces continue on a regular basis in many parts of the country.

Also on Friday, a roadside bomb killed two Iraqis and wounded nine others in Baghdad's al-Doura district. One person was killed and 10 wounded when a car bomb exploded near a bakery in central Tikrit. Three people were killed in Kirkuk.

Two U.S. soldiers died on Friday in an attack in southern Afghanistan. There was also a rocket attack on Bagram Air Field north of Kabul. A rocket landed in a field inside the base but did not cause any injuries or damages.

Insurgents destroyed a NATO fuel convoy on the Jalalabad-Kabul highway. Separately, NATO announced Friday that it has opened an alternate supply route to Afghanistan via Russia and central Asia — a critical development that gives the alliance the ability to bypass the previous ambush-prone main routes through Pakistan.

Fearful of Taliban attacks and death on dangerous roads, Pakistani truckers on the NATO supply line from Pakistan to Afghanistan curse their jobs and say they feel like traitors in a time of war. The plan a strike. Drivers say they earn the equivalent of 300 to 400 dollars per trip from Karachi or an inland depot across the border, where the 142,000-strong US-led foreign military force is set to increase to 150,000 by August. Drivers feel bitter at the Americans, the Taliban and Pakistanis, whom many Afghans accuse of fuelling the nearly nine-year conflict in their country. "Americans have failed in Afghanistan," says one driver. "Pakistan is like a B-team of America, there is no Taliban. It's all a game, a game of Pakistan and a game of Americans." Furious at the conditions, the All Pakistan Oil Transporters Association called a three-day strike by convoys to Afghanistan after this week's attack at Tarnol, demanding government protection from criminals, bribery and the Taliban. However, Pakistani authorities have said repeatedly that police are not responsible for providing security to NATO supply trucks as they are working on a private basis and are hired by private contractors.

In Kandahar province on Friday, nine Afghans, including four women and three children, were killed and eight other people were wounded when their mini bus hit a roadside bomb in Maiwand district. In neighboring Zabul province, a suicide bomber dressed in a burqa detonated his cache of explosives in a shopping area in Shahjoy district, killing two people and wounding at least 16 others. A private security company employee was killed in a mine explosion in the Ali Shir district of Khost province on Thursday.

U.S. has launched several drone strikes since Thursday, killing more than 17 suspected militants in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan. Security officials say two separate strikes on Friday killed at least 14 suspects in attacks targeting militant compounds. On Thursday, officials said a similar strike killed three other militants near the town of Miran Shah. Pakistan's government has objected to the use of drones, saying they violate its sovereignty and sometimes kill innocent civilians. posted 11 June, 2010

War through 2040?; 114 casualties in wedding blast; Vet PTSD on the rise

Former US strategic analyst Daniel Ellsberg has warned that the war is not even half-way through and that troops could continue to occupy Afghanistan through for another generation. "The war will no more be over in three to five years than it is right now. In comments on American and Australian plans to escalate forces in Afghanistan, Ellsberg predicted, "If Australians are committed to supporting this strategy they can figure on 10, 20 and 30 years". Ellsberg said that the war could continue even to the year 2040. Mr Ellsberg exposed how four successive US adminstrations lied to the public about the Vietnam War when he leaked the top-secret 'Pentagon Papers' to the New York Times in 1971.

Senior U.S. officials begged the U.K. yesterday to send more troops to Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, the senior US commander for Iraq and Afghanistan said that war would be lost without more British support. “The scale of the British contribution in Afghanistan is such that the coalition cannot succeed without you,” he said yesterday in London, where he met David Cameron. However, Cameron - visiting Afghanistan for the first time today - responded by ruling out the sending more troops, saying Britain's forces should not stay on "for a day longer" than necessary.

A blast ripped through a wedding party in full swing in Nadahan Village, Afghanistan last Wednesday, killing 40 Afghans and wounding at least 74 more. The blast hit in an area that is largely considered a Taliban haven, and village residents said they believed they were attacked in an air bombardment. Mohammad Rassool, a cousin of the groom, said helicopters were circling above the compound before the explosion. The bomb blast almost completely flattened the outer wall of a compound in the Arghandab district of Kandahar where male wedding guests had gathered for a meal. The windows and walls of the mud-brick dwellings were shattered and cracked. Women guests at the party were in another compound that was not hit by the explosion.

In Iraq on Thursday, two people were wounded when a bomb exploded outside a liquor store in Baghdad's northern Shaab district. A roadside bomb exploded as an SUV convoy passed in the northern outskirts of Baghdad, wounding two others. A bomb exploded outside the home of a policeman, wounding two members of his family, in the town of Saqlawiya. In Basra, armed men attacked and robbed a market for goldsmiths, killing three people and wounding four others.

Between 8.5 percent and 14 percent of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq report either post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, researchers found. Jeffrey L. Thomas of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., and colleagues analyzed anonymous mental health surveys of 18,305 U.S. Army soldiers -- reserve and non-reserve -- three to 12 months after deployment. The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, shows that at 12 months after combat, mental health problems among veterans do not abate, and in many cases, increase, Thomas said. "If soldiers who are struggling with serious functional impairment as the result of a previous deployment are deployed again, there is potential that this could impair their performance in combat," the study said.

A Pakistani-born American man was on Wednesday sentenced to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty for helping an al-Qaida operative in London in his efforts to combat U.S. forces in Afghanistan. U.S. District Chief Judge Loretta Preska sentenced Syed Hashmi, a former Brooklyn college student, who pleaded guilty on April 27 to a charge of conspiracy to provide material support or resources to the terror network while studying in the U.K., to the maximum sentence under law. posted 10 June, 2010

Blackhawk down, 8 more US casualties; Longest American war; NATO convoy destroyed

Afghan insurgents shot down a NATO helicopter in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing four U.S. soldiers and bringing to 23 the number of foreign troops killed in escalating violence so far this week. The blackhawk crashed into the Sangin district bazaar. At least three more soldiers were injured in the crash. The military also announced the death of another soldier in a separate incident. Two Americans were also killed by an IED yesterday and a British soldier died in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province.

Afghan forces backed by NATO-led troops killed 23 militants and detained seven others in northwest Badghis province on Tuesday. Four Afghan soldiers were killed in the gun battle lasted for few hours.

Operation Enduring Disaster has now surpassed the occupation of Vietnam as the longest war in U.S. history, and second only to WWII in total costs. Many of today's so-called diplomats and military leaders also served in that old "crazy Asian war" - apparently never having learned the lessons of fighting wars that should never have been started.

In Pakistan, militants launched a midnight attack on a convoy of more than 50 trucks carrying supplies for Western troops in Afghanistan, setting them ablaze. At least seven people were killed and five injured in the brazen Tuesday night attack in a field in Sangjani, on the outskirts of Islamabad. The disruption of the supply chain has forced the U.S. and other NATO countries to pursue alternate routes through the former Soviet republics of central Asia. "We are now in a difficult phase. Alternative routes into Afghanistan can be found, but they are a longer distance and more difficult than the one through Pakistan. The war in Afghanistan will not come to a sudden end if we can't take supplies through Pakistan, but the logistics do become more complicated," said a western official.

In Iraq, two civilians were killed when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed into a U.S. army patrol near Muqdadiya on Wednesday, while four other people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in other attacks throughout the country. There was no immediate information on U.S. military casualties.

In Abu Ghraib, an armed group killed a policeman and his wife in their home, and wounded their five sons. In western Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one civilian and wounded two others. In Mosul,gunmen killed an off-duty policeman on his farm. Security forces said a 16-year-old al Qaeda recruit was arrested on Wednesday minutes before he planned to blow himself up and assassinate a Shi'ite cleric. A captain in the Interior Ministry was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his car exploded in central Baghdad on Tuesday. Three more people were killed in Kirkuk and Mosul. Meanwhile, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, says that a string of setbacks for al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq has left the insurgent group "devastated" and struggling. posted 09 June, 2010

14 US dead; Afghan intelligence and interior chiefs resign; Bombs not food for Pakistanis

Five U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday in war-torn Afghanistan, and another seven on Monday, as violence continues to grow in Operation Enduring Disaster. Three more NATO soldiers were also killed on Monday, bringing the total of ISAF dead during the past four days to 19. Sunday and Monday's deathss follow the killings of two American soldiers on Friday by small-arms fire in the south. Two British soldiers were killed in a small arms clash with insurgent forces in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on Saturday. Elsewhere two Spanish soldiers sustained minor injuries when they were ambushed by insurgents in the northwest.

Separately on Monday, two foreign contractors, one of them an American, were killed Monday in a suicide attack on an Afghan police training center in the southern city of Kandahar.

Also on Sunday, three policemen died when their car hit a roadside bomb in the northern province of Kunduz. Two civilians and another officer were killed by an improvised explosive device targeting police in the Taliban spiritual homeland of Kandahar. The bomb wounded 11 civilians, including six children. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted a NATO convoy in Jalalabad. Thirteen Afghan civilians, including five children, were wounded in that attack. A Taliban key commander Mullah Zalgai was killed in Kandahar province, south of Afghanistan, NATO statement said on Friday.

Afghanistan's intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, and interior minister, Hanif Atmar, resigned Sunday to take responsibility for allowing militants to elude a massive security operation and launch an attack on last Wednesday's national peace conference. The surprise resignations are likely to cause major disruption within two key security agencies of the police and intelligence services.

The U.S. Army is planning to waste as much as $100 million to expand its Special Operations headquarters in northern Afghanistan — as the insurgency deepens and the United States ramps up its troop numbers in an attempt to turn around the war.

A car bomb exploded outside a Baghdad police station Sunday in the deadliest of a pair of attacks that killed six people in the Iraqi capital. A suicide attacker drove the bomb-rigged car up to a gate protecting the police post in western Baghdad's al-Amil neighborhood during an early morning shift change when officers were gathered outside its blast walls. The blast killed four police officers and one civilian, and wounded 15 people. Later Sunday, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi police patrol in Baghdad's eastern Zayouna neighborhood, wounding four policemen and a bystander. In eastern Baghdad, a remote-controlled bomb exploded near a courthouse, missing a judge who was the target but wounding one of his bodyguards and several bystanders. Another bomb, stuck to the underside of a car in Baghdad's central Allawi al-Hillah area, ripped the vehicle apart during rush-hour traffic, killing the driver and wounding three passengers.

On Saturday, gunmen killed two candidates from the Sunni-backed coalition that won the most seats in Iraq's March parliamentary election, slayings that the alliance said were part of a politically motivated campaign of assassinations.

Bombs and gunmen killed eleven people in a series of attacks in Iraq Monday, including a car bomb that exploded in a Baghdad shopping area.

Following the militarism and war example set by the U.S., Pakistan has announced it is to increase military defense spending by 17% in the coming year - despite a large national debt. Pakistan's national defence spending will rise to more than $5 B a year. Every dollar spent on "defense" is bread that it taken out of the mouths of the poor.

In recent weeks, Pakistan’s military has been waging a full-scale campaign against the Taliban in the country’s Swat Valley. This operation has displaced several million people from Swat and surrounding areas, threatening their access to food. This developing humanitarian crisis is exacerbating Pakistan’s already-widespread food insecurity. According to 2008 data from the World Food Program, 77 million Pakistanis—nearly half the country’s total population—are food insecure, while 95 of Pakistan’s 121 districts face problems such as hunger and malnutrition-related disease. Last year, a UNICEF report concluded that half of all child deaths in Pakistan can be attributed to poor nutrition. posted 07 June, 2010

Afghan Jirga opens with violence; Iraq election results ratified; Drone attacks may be "war crimes"

Gunfire and rocket attacks launched by the Afghanistan Taliban targeted the opening session of an assembly Wednesday in Kabul to discuss how to end the nine-year war in Afghanistan. The first rocket attack struck near the jirga site as Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave his opening address. A gunfight then ensued as police attacked suspected suicide bombers the government said were attempting to detonate explosives near the tent where the assembly was held, and a second rocket was later launched.

The attacks were another blow to the "Peace" Jirga, which was billed as an attempt to gain national consensus on how to approach peace talks with insurgents, but had already met skepticism and even boycotts from some Afghan leaders. It is the third such conference since the U.S. invasion of 2001.

A British Marine was killed in a blast in southern Afghanistan today. A U.S. Soldier was killed on Sunday.

NATO launched airstrikes Monday against Taliban insurgents who had forced government forces to abandon a district in eastern Afghanistan. Rockets fired by insurgents killed a child and wounded two others while targeting police posts in the northern Jawzjan province on Monday evening.

Iraq's Supreme Court on Tuesday ratified the results of the nation's March 7 parliamentary election, officially declaring the secular Iraqiya alliance the vote's biggest winner. The televised announcement by the court's top judge marked the first major step toward resolving Iraq's election crisis and the seating of a new parliament. But the government impasse remains far from over, and it could still take weeks, perhaps months, before lawmakers elect new leaders. The March vote left the country without a clear winner, as none of Iraq's six major political coalitions won a majority in the 325-seat legislature. Iraqiya, heavily backed by Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, is led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. Iraqiya won 91 seats, two more than the State of Law, led by Maliki.

More than a dozen militants were killed Wednesday in a district where Pakistan declared an end to major combat operations hours earlier after a two-month assault. Helicopter gunships shelled suspected Taliban hideouts near the towns of Kaasha and Toti Mela in the northwest Orakzai tribal district, killing seven militants. More than a dozen militants attacked an army checkpost in the Shahu Khel area in which two soldiers were wounded.

Governments must come clean on their methods for killing suspected terrorists and insurgents - especially when using unmanned drones - because they may be committing war crimes, a U.N. human rights expert said Wednesday. Philip Alston, the independent U.N. investigator on extrajudicial killings, called on countries to lay out the rules and safeguards they use when carrying out so-called targeted killings, publish figures on civilian casualties and prove they have attempted to capture or incapacitate suspects without killing them. posted 02 June, 2010

Afghanistan: America's longest war now "Obama's War"; 93 die in Pak mosque attacks; Iraq update

The Vietnam War's length is often is dated to Aug. 7, 1964, when Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving the president a virtual carte blanche to wage war. By the time the last U.S. ground combat troops were withdrawn in March 1973, the war had lasted 103 months. U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001. On June 7, the war will complete its 104th month and the White House and Pentagon say they want to remain for "several more years".

Many of the U.S. soldiers now being sent to die in the mountains of Afghanistan were only in elementary school when the invasion began. While their parents and politicians sip coffee at Starbucks, this generation of America's youth has been brainwashed into believing that they are "sacrificing for the good of the nation" - just as a few of those who returned from Vietnam still believe that they did something "noble" by invading that country. The talents and treasure of this nation continue to be wasted in futile military efforts. Congress and lying presidents are at fault. On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to waste $700 Billion more on war and "defense" in the coming year while President Obama continues the myth that soldiers are dying "in defense of their fellow citizens" and to "protect the United States of America."

Another American soldier died in Afghanistan on Friday. More than 430 of the U.S. dead were killed after Mr. Obama took office in January, 2009 making this now "Obama's War". Meanwhile, officials said that after five days of fighting, the Afghan border police, supported by American helicopters, repelled a force of Pakistani Taliban who appeared to have crossed the border to try to carve out a new haven in Afghanistan's Nuristan province. The fighting ended with two border police officers dead, three wounded, at least three houses burned, and at least 25 Taliban dead.

As the U.S. prepares for a major assault in Kandahar, one commander says, "We don't know who the enemy is". His word echoed those of the British Redcoats who faught soldiers and minutemen during the American Revolution. "I wish he'd wear a uniform and a name plate that said 'enemy'. Once I understand his motivations and ideology I can target that and leverage that against him." "Until then I'm kind of fumbling around," today's soldier said.

Leaders of Pakistan's minority Ahmadi sect demanded better government protection Saturday as they buried many of the 93 sect members killed by Islamist militants at two of the group's mosques. The attacks occurred minutes apart Friday in two neighborhoods in the eastern city of Lahore. Two teams of gunmen, including some in suicide vests, stormed the mosques and sprayed bullets at worshippers while holding off police.

The attackers opened opened fire with AK47s guns upon entering the two mosques, one in the posh Model Town section of the city, the other in the Garhi Shahu neighborhood near the heart of Lahore. According to an eyewitness the prayer leader at the mosque appealed for calm and asked the unarmed worshippers to continue praying even as they were being attacked. Mourners on Saturday began burying the victims of the attacks at a sprawling graveyard in Rabwa.

Paul Bremer, the former idiot Viceroy of Iraq, blamed the Pentagon for the disastrous post-invasion situation in that country. "It is impossible to exaggerate the difficulties created by the chronic under-resourcing of the CPA's efforts," Bremer said in a statement, made public on Friday, to an inquiry examining Britain's role in the war. As head of the CPA, Bremer was then-president George W Bush's top official in Iraq from May 2003 until June 2004 when the United States "returned sovereignty" to Iraqi authorities. The British public inquiry, headed by former civil servant John Chilcot, said it had questioned a number of US officials this month including Bremer, but only provided details of those who had agreed to have their names released publicly. The five-person panel began its work last year and has already quizzed former prime ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

This week in Iraq, there were at least 50 casualties of the ongoing war. A roadside bomb exploded near a joint patrol of Iraqi army and police, killing two soldiers and wounding four in Taji district on Saturday. A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in eastern Mosul, killing two police officers. Two more bodies were found near Mosul. On Friday, a roadside bomb exploded near a police checkpoint in Baqouba, wounding three persons. Five people were wounded by bombs in Baghdad. Two mortar rounds targeting a fabric factory in southern Mosul wounded eleven of the factory workers on Thursday. There were 12 other casualties in Mosul and Baghdad. On Wednesday 6 Iraqis were killed in Kirkuk, Daquq and Mosul. posted 29 May, 2010

94,000 troops still in Iraq; Arrests in deaths of colonels: Afghans accuse Pakistan's ISI

Using figures collected Saturday, the Pentagon says 94,000 U.S. forces and more than 100,000 military contractors remain in Iraq, even as the number of troops in Afghanistan continues to surge. The White House continues to claim that all U.S. combat troops will be removed from Iraq by September, but it plans to leave as many as 50,000 "non-combat" forces, in addition to tens of thousands of paramilitary contractors.

Also, aroadside bomb targeting a police patrol in northeastern Baghdad wounded five people including three police officers on Tuesday.Two bombs targeting the house of a senior police officer killed his guard and wounded four members of his family in central Ramadi on Monday. There were six Iraqi casualties from attacks in Mosul.

NATO forces announced that two more soldiers have died in Afghanistan. A Canadian soldier was killed in a small arms attack in Eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday. A U.S. soldier was killed by an IED in southern Afghanistan on Monday. There are currently around 130,000 international troops in Afghanistan -- of whom, according to the Pentagon, 94,000 are American, with the total number set to rise to 150,000 in coming months.

Also on Tuesday, Afghan and NATO-led forces killed several individuals in a fierce gun battle in Paktia province . Insurgents shot dead six tribal elders in a district of southeastern Khost province on Sunday.

About 10 troops from the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade unit based at Fort Lewis, Wash., are under investigation for as many as three civilian deaths in Afghanistan, along with other potential wrongdoing. In addition to charges of murder, allegations also included illegal drug use, assault and conspiracy.

Afghan authorities Monday announced the arrest of seven people in last week's car suicide car bombing that killed a Canadian and an American colonel, 2 American lieutenant colonels and their 2 American drivers, as well as 12 Afghan civilians. A spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence agency on Monday accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency (ISI) of involvement in their deaths. “All the explosions and terrorist attacks by these people were plotted from the other side of the border and most of the explosives and materials used for the attacks were brought from the other side to Afghanistan,” said Saeed Ansari, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s spy agency. posted 25 May, 2010

Kandahar Air Base attacked; 14 more US casualties; 150+ Iraqi casualties; Brit: Iraq war "wrong" and "mistake"; US drones kill 9 Pakistanis

Insurgents assaulted Kandahar Air Base, the main military base in southern Afghanistan, on Saturday night, in the second attack on a major base in a week. The attack began with rocket fire around 8 p.m., said Cmdr. Amanda Peterseim. One of the rockets struck near a boardwalk common area and wounded at least six military personnel there. The violence added to a week of high-profile attacks. On Tuesday, a car-bomb attack on a military convoy in Kabul killed 18 people, and wounded 47. Then, a day later, Taliban foot soldiers and suicide bombers tried to break through the gates at Bagram Air Base, killing one person and wounding at least five American soldiers.

Three U.S. soldiers and an American contracter were killed on Saturday in Afghanistan in two separate incidents. Two soldiers, and the civilian were killed in an attack in southern Afghanistan. Another soldier died, and two were injured by an IED. A British soldier was killed in an explosion while on foot patrol near Almas in southern Afghanistan on Friday. A Canadian soldier was killed on Tuesday. Also, a Sea King helicopter carrying British troops in Afghanistan was been hit by enemy fire while landing in the Nad-e Ali area of Helmand province on Friday. Some on board received minor injuries.

The U.S. military also announced the death of more soldiers in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. One Soldier was killed in Mosul on Friday. Another US soldier, belonging to United States Forces-Iraq's northern command, died of injuries sustained from a "non-combat incident" (i.e. suicide) on Thursday.

Also in Iraq, A minivan packed with explosives blew up near a crowded cafe just steps from the headquarters of a police rapid-response unit in the town of Khalis ion Friday, killing at least 30 people and wounding 80 others. Another car bombing on Friday in the town of Nimrud, just south of the northern city of Mosul, wounded seven people. A bomb planted in a building used by Iraqi police wounded four policemen when it went off in central Baghdad.

Four Iraqis were killed when Turkish war planes hit rebel targets in a cross-border raid northern Iraq Thursday. Additional members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were wounded.The attacks targeted underground shelters and rebels traveling on foot, Turkish sources said. There were 25 additional Iraqi casualties in Kirkuk, Baqouba, Mussayab and Mosul on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

British Labour leader Ed Balls on Friday admitted the Iraq war was "wrong" and "a mistake". The former children's secretary said the decision to join the invasion in 2003 was an "error" for which Britain had paid a heavy price. "It was a mistake. On the information we had, we shouldn't have prosecuted the war. We shouldn't have changed our argument from international law to regime change in a non-transparent way," he said. "It was an error for which we as a country paid a heavy price, and for which many people paid with their lives. Saddam Hussein was a horrible man, and I am pleased he is no longer running Iraq. But the war was wrong."

A U.S. drone strike killed nine people in Pakistan in North Waziristan Friday night, including two children, two women and five men. Washington continues to widen the war in Pakistan and is escalating tensions among that country's 166 million people. During the past two days there have been major protests against the U.S. because of the war and also due to a Facebook page that advocated creating "sacrilegious" caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed as a form of free speech. posted 22 May, 2010

UK inquiry targets US officials; 20 US casualties in Enduring Disaster; Planning for more war in Pakistan

Britain's Iraq war inquiry panel arrived in the United States on Tuesday as it continues to investigate mistakes made in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, but officials are not expected to hold talks with former President George W. Bush. The five-member panel appointed by the British government is examining the case made for the war and errors in planning for post-conflict reconstruction — but it won't apportion blame or establish criminal or civil liability.

It has taken live testimony from British politicians and military and intelligence officials — including a gripping evidence session with former Prime Minister Tony Blair. The inquiry's staff said the panel will hold five days of private meetings in Washington and Boston, but would not disclose in advance who was meeting with the team. Details of private correspondence between Blair and Bush have been provided to the panel, but have not been released publicly.

During the past four days, 20 more U.S. soldiers have been killed or injured in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, Afghan insurgents launched a brazen pre-dawn against the giant U.S.-run Bagram Air Field, killing an American contractor and wounding nine service members. At least 10 insurgents were killed as Taliban suicide bombers attempted to breach the defenses of the base north of Kabul, while others fired rockets and grenades inside. The attack started around 3 a.m. Blasts and gunfire only subsided around midday. No insurgents managed to get into the base and none were able to detonate their suicide vests.

The Bagram attack came a day after a suicide bomber struck a U.S. convoy in Kabul. Six soldiers - five Americans and one Canadian - were killed in a devastating suicide bombing in the capital of Kabul during morning rush hour. Two more U.S. soldiers were seriously injured in the attack as the total U.S. dead in Operation Enduring Disaster rose above 1,000.

The massive attack also killed 19 Afghans and wounded 47 more. “The blast knocked me down, although I wasn’t very near the explosion but I saw a van exploded and there was blood and bodies everywhere,” said a teenager named Mustafa. Another soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device in which one of his colleagues was injured, while the other died in a small arms attack on Monday. On Monday two Italian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Herat. On Sunday two US servicemen died in southern Afghanistan. The Obama Administration is escalating the war and deploying thousands more troops with the overall number of Nato soldiers to peak at 150,000 by August as part of a "new" strategy to "win the hearts and minds" of the 29 million Afghans.

On Monday, a plane carring 44 people crashed in the Salang Pass of the mountains of Afghanistan. Maulvi Rahman Gul - a cleric who stressed peace - was gunned down in an ambush when returning home in the Chapa Dara district on Sunday.

President Obama has also sent his top national security advisers to Pakistan to reiterate to the government in Islamabad the importance of cracking down on terrorists. CIA Director Leon E. Panetta and National Security Advisor James L. Jones are expected to discuss the widening war with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, and Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. It's important the Pakistanis hear our latest thinking on the common threat we face from the tribal areas," a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject.

Meanwhile, a deadly bomb struck Northwest Pakistan on Tuesday in the town of Dera Ismail Khan Tuesday, killing at least 12 people. posted 19 May, 2010

Iraq recount shows clean vote; 130 casualties in Tal Afar; Afghan civilian toll climbs in"nobody is winning", "inept" and "no hope" occupation; 4 US dead

Iyad Allawi's bloc held on to its two-seat lead in parliament after a laborious manual recount of votes in Baghdad turnbed up no evidence of electoral fraud, in an embarrassing rejection of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's efforts to overturn his rival's lead. The recount was ordered nearly a month ago after Maliki's Shiite-dominated electoral slate alleged that as many as 750,000 ballots had been manipulated, with the worst violations occurring in Baghdad. "There is no evidence that there was manipulation, or forgery or any grievous mistake," election commissioner Qassem Aboudi said at a Baghdad news conference.

In Tal Afar, three suicide bombers blew themselves up during a soccer game, killing at least 10 people and wounding another 120. The first bomber waited until the end of the match and then detonated his car bomb amid a crowd of supporters and players near the field's entrance. In the ensuing panic, two others attackers activated their suicide belts inside the screaming crowd

Local residents protested and burned a makeshift U.S. flag over an overnight raid in Surkh Rod on Thursday which left as many as 9 civilians dead while Afghan President Karzai was dining with U.S. President Obama in Washington. Protesters proceeded to throw stones at the government buildings in the area, until police opened fire on the crowd, killing at least one more. NATO continues to deny that any civilians died in the attacks.

The number of civilians killed by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has risen this year, despite efforts to limit fallout from the widening war against the Taliban, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. Citing NATO statistics, the Pentagon said U.S. and NATO forces killed 90 civilians from January to April -- a 76 percent rise from the 51 deaths in the same period of 2009. As thousands of more U.S. troops poor into Afghanistan, the Pentagon is already warning that they expect civilians deaths - many at U.S. hands - to continue to climb.

U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal said that although progress is being made in Afghanistan, "nobody is winning at this point," in an interview aired Thursday on the NewsHour. However, McChrystal also said that he expects the U.S. to continue the war in Afghanistan for "several more years". Britain's top commander in Afghanistan Major General Nick Carter says private security firms - most hired by NATO - have aggravated corruption in the country through unregulated actions. Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal said on Saturday that an "inept" United States cannot fix Afghanistan's problems and should simply focus on "chasing the terrorists" there. Turki, also former ambassador to Washington, said the US-led NATO troop presence in Afghanistan has irrevocably alienated the Afghan people and has no hope of rebuilding the country. US President Barack Obama "should not be misdirected into believing that he can fix Afghanistan's ills by military means."

A U.S. service member was killed Sunday following an insurgent attack in souther Afghanistan. Two more NATO soldiers were killed in attacks, the military said Friday. A Canadian was killed in an "insurgent attack" in the east of the country on Friday and an American died after a crude bomb exploded in the south on Thursday. Two other U.S. soldiers were killed on Tuesday. Twenty-four NATO troops, including 16 U.S. service members, have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month.

Gun battles and skirmishes in Afghanistan have left 50 people including 42 Taliban fighters dead over the past three days, military officials said Saturday. Five private security guards were killed on Friday in eastern Afghanistan when they were ambushed by insurgents. Three oil tankers that the guards were escorting burned during the fighting, which occurred between Gelan and Muqur districts.

Suspected militants dressed as policemen kidnapped about 60 people in troubled northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border on Saturday. Heavily armed militants first seized a vehicle belonging to the government power utility in the Kurram region and kidnapped four people traveling inside. The vehicle was set on fire. Shortly afterwards, several vehicles were seized from a convoy of civilians traveling to Parachinar, the main city in Kurram. Women and children were among those taken captive. Eighteen men who were kidnapped in Kurram were released unharmed on Sunday. But it is believed that seven other people seized by gunmen at the same time are still being held. posted 16 May, 2010

US missiles kill 24 in Pakistan; 300+ casualties in Iraq; Aghan NGOs closed; 2 more US dead; "Dark" jail at Bagram?

Two separate volleys of American missiles slammed into Pakistan close to the Afghan border Tuesday, killing at least 24 people. The first strike in North Waziristan involved up to 18 missiles — an unusually intense bombardment. They struck cars, homes and tents across a wide area in the Doga area, killing 14. Hours later, another pair of missiles hit a compound in the Gorwek area of North Waziristan killing another 10 people. Pakistan officially protests the missile strikes on its territory as violations of its sovereignty, but it is believed to aid at least some of them.

Iraq boosted security around Baghdad and the rest of the country Tuesday, a day after a string of attacks across the country killed at least 150 people and wounded hundreds as "black ops" continue a campaign to slow U.S. withdrawal. The biggest attack came against a textile factory in Hillah, where a pair of suicide car bombers attacked the entrance during a shift change, killing 50 and wounding 136.

The sheer breadth of the attacks, stretching from cities in the north to the southern port of Basra is evidence of coordinated efforts to create havoc throughout the country - even as Washington claims that it wants to end the occupation. Across Baghdad, as helicopters buzzed through the skies, new checkpoints were established. South of Baghdad, around the provincial capital of Hillah where the most devastating attack took place, authorities beefed up manpower at checkpoints and searched cars more frequently.

Afghanistan's government said Tuesday it had dissolved 152 Afghan and 20 international aid organisations. The economy ministry said licences for the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were cancelled for three reasons -- some at their own request, some because they were unable to secure funds and some for unspecified "misconduct". The Filtration and Dissolution Commission, headed by economics minister Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal, was set up by President Hamid Karzai to assess the conduct of almost 1,500 aid organisations operating in Afghanistan.

Karzai is currently on a state visit to the United States aimed at mending fences following a series of high-profile outbursts by both sides. The United States and NATO have 130,000 troops in the country keeping Karzai in power, with another 20,000 on the way by August. Some 1,224 domestic and 301 foreign NGOs are still registered with the ministry, operating in a various sectors. They provide invaluable assistance to Afghanistan in addressing problems of poverty and inequity in a fragile, post-conflict environment as well as investigating human rights abuses of the U.S. and the Afghan government.

Two more U.S. soldiers were killed in "Operation Enduring Disaster" on Tuesday, killed by an IED in southern Afghanistan. Also Tuesday, four teachers and nine students were hospitalized after a bomb went off under a stairwell at a boys' school in the Smalhail district of eastern Khost province. Thirty schoolgirls in the northern city of Kunduz and six in Kabul were admitted to hospital, victims of a possible gas attack.

The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a "black" facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC. Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse. In recent weeks the BBC has logged the testimonies of nine prisoners who say they had been held in the so-called "Tor Jail". They told consistent stories of being held in isolation in cold cells where a light is on all day and night. In response to these allegations, Vice Adm Robert Harward, in charge of US detentions in Afghanistan, denied the existence of such a facility or abuses. posted 11 May, 2010

Turkey bombs Kurdistan; Betrayus for president? Halliburton scores again; More WWIII war money

Turkish warplanes pounded Iraq on Friday after Turkey claimed its army helicopters came under anti-aircraft fire from Iraqi soil. The helicopters were chasing a group of Turkish Kurdish rebels who killed two soldiers in a cross-border attack near the Daglica area along the Iraqi border. Turkey has numerous military bases throughout the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Hundreds of students and other activists rallied Saturday to protest the kidnap and murder of a Kurdish journalist in northern Iraq, with many blaming the regional government for his death. The killing of Sardasht Othman, 23, has drawn new attention to long-standing allegations of government-sanctioned abuse of media and freedom of expression in occupied Iraq. The U.S. Pentagon on Thursday barred four journalists from military commissions at Guantanamo Bay because they published the name of a witness after being told not to.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan, the military said Friday. One died in an "insurgent attack" while another was killed by indirect fire. Two British soldiers were killed on Monday.

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Saturday in Kabul even as the military readies a major military offensive. The visit came on the eve of Karzai's departure for talks in Washington with US President Barack Obama.

Gen. David Petraeus, continues to encourage speculation among necons that he will run for president. With former Vice President Dick Cheney and members of the Bush-era glitterati known as the neo-cons looking on, Petraeus accepted American Enterprise Institute (AEI)'s annual Irving Kristol Award, named after the giant of neo-conservatism – a conservative ideology with roots in American liberal thinking that eschews realist foreign policy in favor of an activist and interventionist approach to the world. The highest goal of neo-conservatism is the spread of “American values” including freedom and democracy.

Only hours after the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was backing a lawsuit against defense contractor KBR Inc., the Army awarded the controversial company another no-bid, multi-million-dollar deal to provide logistical support for soldiers in Iraq. The latest contract given to KBR came without any competitive bidding and will pay out $568 million for the contractor to continue supporting the U.S. military in Iraq through 2011. The Army has been told by Congress to stop giving no-bid awards to KBR. But commanders, led by Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said they did so because they were concerned about disrupting services to Army personnel. Halliburton was also involved in the recent accident on British Petroleum oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

India’s defence minister warned the US on Friday against providing military supplies to Pakistan, saying the hardware could be diverted to target India. The warning came after the US in March said, it would deliver unarmed drones to Pak and less than a month after, it unveiled plans to transfer $600 million to Islamabad to pay for anti-terrorist operations. Antony said that India’s concerns had been conveyed to Washington. “Even though the US is giving equipment to Pak to fight against the Taliban, we feel there is every possibility of diverting most of them to the Indian borders,” he said. The slow drift to WWIII continues...funded by the U.S. taxpayer. posted 08 May, 2010

Violence rises in Swat Valley; 'Tough 10-15 more years ahead in Afghanistan'?; More civilian deaths; Iraq violence rises in April

A suicide bomber killed five people in Pakistan's Swat Valley on Saturday as the U.S.-led war continues to expand and violence rises. Renewed violence in Swat over the last few weeks has raised concerns that militants are regrouping in the area while the army tries to consolidate gains in other parts of the northwest and return displaced people to their homes. Saturday's attacker blew himself up in a hostel after being surrounded by government forces near Sohrab Khan market in the town of Mingora. Six people were injured on Saturday when a tricycle bomb exploded in Quetta city's Saryab neighbourhood.

Pakistani troops are pressing an anti-Taliban offensive into a second month in a tribal district near the Afghan border and claim to have killed at least eight "militants" on Friday. The United States plans to transfer $600 million to Pakistan to reimburse the government for military operations over the last year, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

Irate demonstrators burned tires and blocked traffic and chanted anti-US slogans in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday after U.S.-led forces killed an armed relative of an Afghan lawmaker during a night raid on her home. Afghan protesters burn tires on a main road in Jalalabad. U.S. troops raided the home of a female member of the Afghan parliament and killed a neighbour who was one of her relatives, the MP said on Thursday. Afghanistan Wednesday commemorated the 1992 toppling of a Soviet-backed regime, which led to bloody civil war and the rise of the Taliban. NATO said on Saturday it was investigating whether shots fired by its troops in southern Afghanistan had killed two women and a child traveling in car. A spokesman for the governor of Zabul province said the passengers were shot Friday while driving toward a roadblock where a combined group of NATO and Afghan troops were trying to disable a roadside bomb. Twelve trucks, most of them carrying fuel to a NATO base in eastern Afghanistan, were burned by an angry crowd last Sunday less than 30 miles from Kabul.

A senior NATO official warns the US-led forces of further casualties in Afghanistan, where the alliance has already lost 172 soldiers so far this year. Speaking on the sidelines of a Royal United Services Institute conference in London, NATO's Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan Mark Sedwill said on Thursday that the foreign forces in Afghanistan could face another four years of hard combat. Sedwill, a former UK ambassador to Afghanistan, also said that NATO and British soldiers could be expected to stay in Afghanistan for at least another decade. The 126,000-strong foreign presence in the country has not been able to stabilize Afghanistan. NATO member-states, however, still plan to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops to the Central Asian country this year.

The number of civilians injured and killed by violence in Iraq rose sharply in April from the month before. A total of 274 civilians were killed by bomb blasts or other attacks last month, compared with 216 in March and 211 in February, government figures showed on Saturday. On Friday, at least three Iraqis were killed in a bombing in a market in western Iraq. A night earlier, eight people were killed in a bomb blast outside a liquor store in southeast Baghdad. Three U.S. soldiers died from hostile fire in April and another by a IED on Thursday in Khalis.

Nouri Maliki, whose bloc finished second behind former Premier Iyad Allawi’s slate in March elections, says ‘regional, international’ players are trying to topple his government. Iraq's prime minister dismissed his rival's call for international help to resolve the country's postelection political crisis as the dispute threatens to inflame rifts and undermine American plans for withdrawal. Iraq continues to be embroiled in its messy post-election coalition-building process and this mess may be used as an excuse by the White House to slow troops withdrawals....exactly what the clandestine forces may be trying to accomplish. posted 01 May, 2010

Three US dead; NATO troops kill 4 Afghan children; 330+ casualties in Iraq since Monday

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her NATO allies planned Friday to discuss ways to ensure strong civilian support to Afghanistan beyond July 2011 when US forces start winding down their mission. Afghanistan is the fourth poorest country in the world and has been devastated by three decades of war and military occupations. A senior State Department official travelling with Clinton said "we will cover the whole gamut of issues, with the emphasis on the civilian side: where things stand, where they need to go." Meanwhile, the military announced on Friday that two more US soldiers died from wounds sustained in an overnight gun battle with Taliban-linked insurgents just south of Kabul. Two more soldiers were injured. A U.S. soldier died of "non-combat" injuried in Baghdad on Thursday.

An explosion inside an Afghan army base near Kabul's airport on Monday killed one NATO service member and one Afghan soldier. Several NATO troops and three Afghan soldiers were also wounded in the blast. Also on Monday, Afghan and foreign troops killed several insurgents in Qara Bagh district of Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul.

NATO troops opened fire on a vehicle in Khost province in the Gurbuz area southeast Afghanistan on Monday evening, killing four school children. The father of two of those killed said they were teenagers heading home from a volleyball match with two cousins, one of whom was a policeman. One week ago, American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar, killing 5 civilians and wounding as many as 18.

A bomb strapped to the back of a donkey blew up in the centre of southern Kandahar city, killing three children and wounding five people. The deputy mayor of Kandahar city was shot dead on Monday while going to pray at a mosque. A bomb strapped to a motorcycle exploded outside the main police station in the town of Khost but caused no casualties.

Twelve bombs — including car bombs and improvised explosive devices — killed at least 58 people and wounded more than 200 on Friday. The deadliest attacks struck near three mosques in Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, just as worshippers departed Friday afternoon prayers. In Anbar, 7 people died when a series of explosions struck houses in a small village. On Thursday, A bomb attached to the car of the head of security for the power grid in western Iraq exploded in Baghdad's southern district of Doura, seriously wounding him and one other person. A roadside bomb went off in the southern Baghdad district of Saidiya, wounding three people.

On Wednesday, eight people were wounded, including three policemen, after bombs planted on the outskirts of Ramadi destroyed six homes. A parked car bomb targeted a restaurant popular with security personnel in Baqouba killing three people, including a female teacher, a school boy and a security guard from a nearby primary school, police said. Seven others were wounded in the blast that targeted the governor of Diyala province. There were 20 more casualties in Mosul and Baghdad. On Tuesday, bombings and attacks in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Kurdistan, Mahmudiya and Tarmiya killed 6 people and wounded 23 others.

Iraqi and US security forces believe they have killed the two senior "leaders" of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced Monday that the two men known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri were killed in a raid in northern Iraq on Sunday.

In Pakistan, militants ambushed a Pakistani army convoy traveling in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, killing seven soldiers on Thursday. A 15-year-old boy in the area was allegedly shot to death by an earlier group of traveling soldiers when troops opened fire after a roadside bomb exploded near the convoy. Pakistan's security forces said they killed 26 "militants" on Thursday in the tribal district of Orakzai, while two soldiers also died in fighting in the northwest. On Friday, the mutilated bodies of four men alleged to have been U.S. spies were found in Mir Ali town. An explosion blew apart a crowded market in Peshawar on Monday killing at least 22 people and injuring 27. Also on Monday, two prominent locals were killed in the village of Kuza Bandai in the same area. The Pakistan army announced to compensate the civilians misguidedly killed in the air strikes in Tirah valley of Khyber tribal region in the northwest, the army said Wednesday. posted 23 March, 2010

5 US casualties; Afghan police "executed" American; Pakistani casualties mount; Blackwater execs charged

A U.S. soldier was killed and three were injured when their helicopter crashed near Camp Speicher, a giant US base near Tikrit, Iraq late on Saturday evening. A total of 4,391 American troops have died in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion. Also on Saturday, onother American soldier was killed by an IED in southern Afghanistan. Two Dutch soldiers were killed by an IED in Uruzgan province. So far this month, 24 NATO soldiers have died in Afghanistan.

At least 29 "militants", including two commanders, have been killed over four days of intense fighting aimed at protecting supply routes through northern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said Sunday. Also Sunday in the northern province of Faryab, one Afghan was killed and 14 wounded when a remote-controlled bomb exploded in a busy market in the town of Dawlatabad. Three Italian medical workers detained in southern Afghanistan last week have been released. The three employees of Italian non-governmental organization Emergency hadn't been heard from since being taken into custody April 10 in Helmand.

An American bodyguard who saved 17 colleagues by holding back Taliban fighters who stormed a guesthouse was minutes later executed by Afghan police, according to a video which has been seen by officials. Louis Maxwell, a UN security officer from the United States, was among five international UN workers who died in the early morning October 28 attack in Kabul. An amateur video of the attack seen by UN officials and Stern magazine now appears to show Mr Maxwell being shot repeatedly at close range by Afghan police responding to the attack. The United Nations said an investigation had raised "the disturbing possibility" Mr Maxwell had died from "friendly fire". One official who had seen the video said "it looks like an execution". The video shows Mr Maxwell wounded in a group of Afghan police when a single shot is fired, Stern reported. He screams and collapses to the ground. None of the police reacts. Three more shots are fired, then a policeman takes Mr Maxwell's weapon from next to his corpse and leaves.

In Pakistan, Seven people were killed and 26 wounded on Sunday in the third suicide attack in 24 hours in Pakistan's northwestern city of Kohat. Sunday's attack on a police station raised the number of casualties in that country from the spillover of war in Afghanistan.

Relief work has been suspended at the Kacha Pakha camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the outskirts of Kohat town in northwestern Pakistan after two bomb attacks killed at least 41 IDPs. At least 65 others were injured in the Saturday attack. “These were people who had fled their homes. They had suffered displacement; they’d suffered losing their homes. They’d come to the registration point considering it a safe haven. They’d come for help. They’d come for sanctuary. We mourn their loss, and condemn their killing,” said Martin Mogwanja, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan.

Pakistan's army chief admitted on Saturday that civilians were killed in air raids supposedly targeting militants in the Khyber area last week. More than 40 people died in what the army claimed was an attack on militants in a small village of Saravilla. They belonged in fact to a tribe that was pro-government and had resisted Taliban influence. Human rights groups have said civilian casualties in military operations have been considerable, but have been underestimated and under reported. Relief agencies say the offensives against militants in Pakistan and in neighbouring Afghanistan have displaced more than one million people.

In Iraq on Sunday, a car bomb detonated in the main marketplace in Anasfiyah neighbourhood, central Baquba, killing one woman and seriously injuring one man. Armed men broke into a home in Bab al Beedh neighbourhood of Mosul and shot and killed one man and three women who were inside the house. A home made bomb was thrown at an army checkpoint in Darghazliyah neighbourhood, east Mosul, injuring one civilian. Armed men opened fire upon a police patrol in Mashahdah neighbourhood, injuring two police officers. A bomb attached to a car exploded, severely wounding five people in Baghdad's Saydiya district on Saturday. Also, a bomb attached to a car exploded, severely wounding five people in the Saydiya district. Another bomb planted in the house of a leader of the local government-backed council leader exploded in central Basra on Friday night, killing his wife and wounding his son.

Federal prosecutors charged the former president of Blackwater Worldwide and four other former senior company officials on Friday with weapons violations and making false statements in the first criminal inquiry to reach into the top management ranks of the private security company. The executives were some of the closest advisers to Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, and helped him steer the company during its swift rise to become the leading contractor providing security for American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan, working for the State Department, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon. Mr. Prince, who was not charged, remains at the helm of the company, now known as Xe Services. The firm has continued to work for the government. One Xe subsidiary, U.S. Training Services, held $354 million in contracts last year, according to government records, mostly for guard services. The Prince family has assets of more than $1 billion and is extremely active in neoconservative and fundamentalist circles. posted 18 March, 2010

5 UN workers missing in Afghanistan; U.S. troops kill more civilians; Pak hospital attack: UN Report on Bhutto released

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said Friday that five of its Afghan staff had gone missing. The staff are believed to have disappeared in Afghanistan's northern province of Baghlan.

A car bomb attack in Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan late Thursday, killed at least 11 people and injured 18 others, including foreign nationals. U.S. troops opened fire on a bus in the Zhari district of Kandahar province Monday, killing at least four people and wounding 18 others. Dozens of Afghans took to the streets in Kandahar city to protest the killings. Demonstrators chanted "Death to America" and called for the downfall of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. They also blocked the main road out of the city. An 18-year-old Afghan woman was murdered in Kandahar as she left work Tuesday.

A suicide bomber killed 10 people, including a TV journalist and senior police officials, in an attack inside a hospital in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta on Friday. A member of parliament from the ruling Pakistan People's Party was among the scores wounded in the attack outside the emergency ward of the hospital. Missiles fired from US drones targeted a car and a compound in in the suburbs of Miranshah Friday, killing at least four people.

A new U.N. report that blames Pakistan's security establishment for failing to stop the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto paves the way for a "proper police investigation" into her killing, an aide to her widower — now the country's president — said Friday. The three-member U.N. panel said her death could have been prevented if the government under then-President Pervez Musharraf, the Punjab province government, and the Rawalpindi District Police had taken adequate measures "to respond to the extraordinary, fresh and urgent security risks that they knew she faced."

Iraqi troops on Thursday killed three men in a shoot-out near the main highway to Baghdad airport. Six people were killed, including an Iraqi counter-terrorism officer and two soldiers, and 13 wounded in a number of bombings and shootings in Iraq on Wednesday. A bomb planted inside a Baghdad liquor store Tuesday killed three people and wounded seven. Iraqi officials say they have closed an airport in Najaf for a week amid reports of a hijack plot by insurgents. posted 16 March, 2010

Mounting casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan; War crimes video; 19 more US casualties

Violence continued throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since Monday, creating at least 412 war casualties since Sunday.

A new video was unveiled this week that showed war crimes being committed by U.S. troops in Iraq. The classified military video clearly shows a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters reporters. The U.S. military's Central Command said does not plan to reopen an investigation and much of the American media continues to ignore the video altogether. As disturbing as the video is, this type of behavior by US soldiers in Iraq is not uncommon say soldiers who shared their stories of time in Iraq. "I remember one woman walking by," said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the US Marines who served three tours in Iraq. He told the audience at the Winter Soldier hearings that took place March 13-16, 2008, in Silver Spring, Maryland, "She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces."

Roadside bombings and other attacks killed six people across Iraq on Saturday. In Fallujah, three bombs went off at dawn at the house of Tariq Fawaz, a former police lieutenant colonel who is now a schoolteacher. The bomb injured Fawaz, his son and two neighbors and killed his wife. There were 12 Iraqi casualties in Kirkuk, Tikrit, Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi and Fallujah on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Tuesday, bombings in Baghdad killed 50 and left another 180 injured.

Two US soldiers were killed and five other U.S. troops were wounded during combat operations in northern Iraq, the military said on Thursday. Three U.S. airmen and a civilian was killed, and three others were injured, Friday when a U.S. Air Force Osprey crashed near Kandahar. One U.S. soldier was killed and two injured during fighting with Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday. Five soldiers from 1st Battalion, 102nd Infantry Regiment were wounded on Sunday when their vehicle was attacked with an improvised explosive device while on patrol in eastern Afghanistan. A French soldier was killed on Thursday and a British soldier was killed on Wednesday. The Taliban posted a video Wednesday of a man identified as American Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured in Afghanistan in June.

An air strike by Nato jets killed four civilians including a child during a fire fight with Taliban militants in Helmand province on Wednesday. The deaths came days after the coalition admitted killing five civilians, including three women, in a bungled night raid in eastern Afghanistan amid accusations it had first tried to cover up the deaths. A suicide bomber who attacked a US military convoy in eastern Afghanistan Wednesday killed an Afghan civilian and injured 15 others. Militants launched a pre-dawn attack on an Indian road construction camp in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, burning vehicles and equipment and sending the crew fleeing. No deaths or injuries were reported in the attack in Khost province's Domanda district.

The Pakistani military has killed nearly 100 people in air raids in tribal areas in the country's northwest on Saturday. At least 75 others were left injured. The attacks were carried out in the Orazkai and Khyber regions near the border with Afghanistan. Pakistani security said their forces killed 29 "militants" Friday. More than 200,000 civilians have fled the military offensive and violence in since November from the districts of Orakzai and Kurram. posted 10 March, 2010

Paks battle in North; 287 Iraqi casualties on Easter Sunday; German, Welsh churches speak against Afghan war; MLK in 1967

Eleven people including three policemen were killed Saturday in a clash between police and criminals involved in kidnapping and robberies in northwest Pakistan. The gunbattle took place in Shiekhan village six miles southwest of Peshawar when police raided a suspected criminals' hideout. Pakistani troops backed by attack helicopters on Sunday killed at least 16 militants in Said Khalil village of Orakzai tribal area in fierce clashes with rebels. Indian troops Sunday gunned down two terrorists who sneaked into Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan.

A series of car bombs went off throughout Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 32 people and wounding as many as 200 more. Two of the explosions occurred in the Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad. One blast was close to the Egyptian Embassy, the other near a complex that holds a number of embassies, including those of Syria and Germany, and the residential complex of the Albanian ambassador. The third car bomb exploded near the Iranian Embassy in the central part of the city. Meanwhile, in central Baghdad, Iraqi security forces arrested a suspected suicide bomber driving a car loaded with explosives in the al-Massbah neighborhood. The would-be bomber was targeting the police headquarters charged with protecting foreign embassies. Also Sunday, Baghdad police reported two roadside bomb explosions in Baghdad. One injured nine people and the other wounded five people. A sticky bomb attached to a minibus wounded the driver in the al-Dora district. Explosives attached to two cars in south Baghdad wounded two civilians. In Mosul, a car bomb exploded, killing three civilians and injuring 35, including seven policemen. Four mortar rounds landed in the Green Zone late Saturday without casualties, police said. However, a spokesman for Baghdad's security office said two Katyusha rockets had struck the Karrada district across the Tigris River from the Green Zone, wounding a woman.

Welsh Independent churches spoke out on Sunday about the "pointless and wasteful war in Afghanistan" that the British are engaged in. The Reverend Dewi Myrddin Hughes of the Union of Welsh Independents said: "Cruelty and death dominate the news headlines; the pointless and wasteful war in Afghanistan shortly entering its ninth year, while other stories of personal tragedy and human suffering abound." The head of Germany's Evangelical church warned Friday that the country's military mission to Afghanistan risked losing its legitimation, and said Germany must avoid becoming a long-term occupying force in the region. "The conflict in Afghanistan has gone out of control," Nikolaus Schneider, the acting head of Germany's Evangelical church, told daily Hamburg Abendblatt in a Saturday article

Exactly one year before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King began to campaign against America's disatrous war in Vietnam. His words hold equally true for Operation Enduring Disater in Iraq and Afghanistan: "The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours......let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response." -- MLK, Jr. April 4, 1967. posted 04 March, 2010

Iraqis massacred; 8 German casualties; 2 US dead; King Karzai vs Obama; Row over Zardari and Bhutto

Unidentified gunmen, dressed in Iraqi and U.S. army uniforms, stormed al-Bu Sayfi late Friday, massacring 24 people, including five women. A curfew is in effect in the area Saturday while a search is under way for the suspects, who were driving government vehicles. Elsewhere in Iraq on Saturday, a bomb planted in a store killed the owner in northern Baghdad. A roadside bomb wounded a policeman and a civilian when it hit a police patrol in central Kirkuk. Another bomb killed two children and wounded two others in al-Multaqa district southwest of Kirkuk. In Mosul, aroadside bomb wounded a woman when it exploded near an army patrol.

A missile from a U.S. helicopter killed two armed men trying to plant a roadside bomb in the village of Basir on Wednesday. bomb attached to a car wounded the driver and two passers-by in the Adhamiya section of northern Baghdad on Thursday. Five other Iraqis were killed on Thursday and Friday in Baghdad.

In Afghanistan, three German soldiers were killed and another five injured in a Friday ambush in Isaa Khail village of Char Dara district of the northern Kunduz Province. On Saturday, as the German military was on their way to the scene of the Taliban attack, they opened fire on Afghan troops killing six. Germany has the third-largest foreign contingent in Afghanistan but their participation in the occupation has been deeply unpopular with the German public. A U.S. soldier was killed by an IED on Friday in southern Afghanistan. A U.S. Marine was killed by an IED on Thursday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out his U.S. backers for the second time in three days on Saturday, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn't stop. He also called for taking over control of elections from the United Nations and eliminating "foreign" candidates and having himself appoint the members of the electoral commission. Previously, the electoral commission threw out as fraudulent nearly a million votes cast for Mr. Karzai during last year's presidential election, ordering a runoff vote. The runoff didn't take place because the runner-up candidate withdrew from the race. Fresh Parliamentary elections are slated for September, and Mr. Karzai's control over the commission could benefit candidates allied with him, potentially producing a more pliant legislature.

Karzai told those who gathered at the palace that the Taliban's "revolt will change to resistance" if the U.S. and its allies kept dictating how his government should run. The word "resistance" is a term often used to convey the idea of a legitimate struggle against unjust rulers, such as the mujahedeen's fight against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. President Karzai's remarks were the latest sign of the growing rift between the Afghan leader and the U.S, which is pouring more troops into the country daily. During a brief visit to Kabul on Monday, President Barack Obama pressed Mr. Karzai to clean up the pervasive corruption in his government. If anything, President Obama's visit appears to have backfired. A businessman with close ties to President Karzai said the Afghan leader was insulted by Mr. Obama's comments and was left with even greater doubts about the American commitment to Afghanistan. Karzai was a former U.S. CIA contact during the Soviet occupation and his family were strong supporters of the former Afghan King, Zahir Shah.

A Japanese freelance journalist - Kosuke Tsuneoka - has gone missing in Afghanistan. Alocal guide said Tsuneoka had been kidnapped after he entered a Taliban-controlled area in the north.

In Pakistan, thirty militants and six Pakistani soldiers died Saturday during an offensive in that country's Orakzai Agency district. Following Good Friday services, a group of armed men and women assaulted the Gordon College Chapel in Rawalpindi, robbing the churchgoers. Nine assailants were arrested by the police.

Pakistan's Attorney General Anwar Mansoor resigned on Friday in a row with the country's law ministry. He said the government was not co-operating in the process of reopening corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari and other officials. Fatima Bhutto, niece of slain former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto has all but accused Zardari of being responsible for the 2007 assassination of Bhutto. President Zardari, Bhutto's former husband, called on a U.N. panel examining the assassination to question former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, among others. Zardari said the leaders had information regarding threats to Bhutto's life prior to her return to Pakistan. A United Nation commission is expected to release its findings from an investigation into the killing on April 15 but is worried that the release might spark more violence. posted 03 March, 2010

US drones in Pakistan kill 6; Navy plane crashes; Bhutto report closes UN office

Unmanned U.S. drones fired two missiles into a house in the Tappi area of North Waziristan, Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 6 people as the U.S. war escalation expands throughout the region. Also, a U.S. Navy plane supporting forces in Afghanistan crashed off Pakistan on Wednesday; 1 crewman missing.

Five American Muslim youths arrested for planning terror attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan implicated by authorities as an anti-terror court began their trial today in Lahore. The accused have been charged under the Pakistan Penal Code and the Anti-Terrorism Act and could face life imprisonment if they are convicted.

Meanwhile, a bomb-laden vehicle blew up at the gate of Jhansi Fort in the area of Bara after security forces opened fire. In the Khyber district, a military camp was attacked by about 100 militants with rockets and a suicide vehicle, killing six soldiers and 20 suspected militants. Fifteen others were injured. Militants also set fire to a boy's school in Maidan town of Lower Dir on Tuesday. The five rooms of the government-run primary were destroyed.

All UN offices in Pakistan will close for three days as a security precaution with the world body to release a report on the assassination of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. "It's a precautionary measure to avoid any unwanted situation that may occur after the publication of this report, for the safety and security of staff members," she added. Bhutto, the first woman to become prime minister of a Muslim country, was killed on December 27, 2007 in a gun and suicide attack after addressing an election rally in Rawalpindi. Her supporters cast doubt on an initial Pakistani probe into her death, questioning whether she was killed by a gunshot or the blast and criticising authorities for hosing down the scene of the attack within minutes.

A bomb concealed on a bicycle killed 17 people Wednesday in southern Afghanistan near a crowd gathered to receive free vegetable seeds provided by the British government as part of a program to encourage them not to plant opium poppy. Forty-five people, including eight children, were wounded in the blast, which occurred in the Nahr-e-Sarraj district just north of Lashkar Gah.

In Iraq on Wednesday, armed men threw a home made bomb at a police patrol near the governorate building in Khalid bin al Waleed Street, central Mosul, injuring two civilians including one woman. Tuesday, armed men killed two young men in front of their home in eastern Mosul and a body was found in Tal Afar. 60-year-old Issa T. Salomi, kidnapped two months ago by militants while working as a linguist for U.S. forces in Iraq, arrived back at Ft. Sam Houston in Texas on Wednesday. The Times of London reported that Salomi, an Iraqi-American, left the military base in Baghdad without permission to visit relatives in the Karrada district of central Baghdad on January 23 and was taken captive and held. posted 31 March, 2010

Obama visits base, but misses Afghans; US soldier dead; Iraq election drama; Kerbala bombings

As president Obama winged home from his Sunday photo op in Afghanistan, a NATO helicopter crashed Monday, injuring 14 people. Elsewhere in the south, a U.S. soldier was killed in a bomb strike. An Australian soldier and his Afghan interpreter were injured in another blast. Security forces say the killed seven Taliban militants and detained two of their commanders in Afghanistan's southern province Helmand province. A rocket or mortar landed at Bagram, the large NATO air base north of Kabul, shortly after President Obama departed from there at the end of a visit.

In Iraq, the election drama continues to unfold. The results showed that Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition won 2,851,823 votes, to 2,797,624 for Maliki and 2,095,354 for the Shiite alliance, the Iraqi National Alliance. The Kurdistan Alliance took 1,686,344 votes. The controversial Accountability and Justice Commission, run by two Shiite candidates charged with removing loyalists to the outlawed Baath Party from government positions announced Monday that it intended to contest the results of the March 7 election because six of the winning candidates were purged on the eve of the election. At least six of those people won seats, and the commission said it intends to get both the candidates and the votes thrown out. At least half of the winning candidates being purged come from secular Shiite Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya bloc. There is already talk of "civil war" in the election results aren't managed carefully.

Two car bombs struck Kerbala on Monday, leaving at at least nine people dead and left as many as 65 injured. In Baghdad, a bomb attached to a car wounded two civilians in the Mansour district. A bomb attached to a car killed a Finance Ministry employee in the Doura district. Two roadside bombs wounded six people in Baquba, 60 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad late on Sunday. One police officer was wounded when gunmen clashed with police in Kirkuk.

A suicide bomber attacked a meeting of anti-Taliban volunteers in Tank city in northwestern Pakistan, killing one person and critically wounding two others on Monday. A bomb attack Sunday wounded five people and destroyed a music shop in Hayatabad. posted 29 March, 2010

Allawi wins; 177 Iraqi casualties; Obama in Kabul; Clinton: "Several years" more in Afghanistan; Casualties grow in Pakistan

Former prime minister Ayad Allawi began reaching out to other political blocs Saturday for allies he needs to form Iraq's next government, after his surprise upset of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraqi elections. Allawi, whose Iraqiya list bested Maliki's State of Law coalition by two seats, 91 to 89, in results announced Friday, faces the greater challenge in putting together a majority. A secular Shiite who won by attracting Sunni Arab and secular voters, Allawi will have to woo other Shiite politicians -- some of whom view Maliki as a more palatable, albeit imperfect, option -- as well as Kurds. Allawi appealed for national unity Saturday, saying in a news conference at his party's headquarters, "The time has come to start building the country and laying the grounds for stability and economic development."

A bomb attack in a Khalis market on Friday killed 59 people and wounded 73 more. A bomb placed in a generator wounded a mother and two of her children when it went off outside her house in central Mosul on Saturday. Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire and wounded two off-duty soldiers in southern Kirkuk. A sniper shot and wounded a commander in a government-backed local militia in the Baghdad's northern district of Adhamiya. Police found the bodies of two men who were shot in the head in the town of Saadiya in Khanaqin. Several bombs exploded Sunday in the town of Qaim near the home of a prominent Sunni figure who ran in this month's parliamentary elections in Iraq, killing five people and wounding 26 others. A roadside bomb went off near a government-backed militia patrol and wounded two militiamen in the capital's southwestern al-Jihad district. In Mosul, clashes between police and insurgents killed a civilian who works with the police and wounded another. A roadside bomb near a police patrol wounded two civilians.

President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Sunday for a firsthand look at the 9-year-old war he has dramatically escalated. After an overnight flight from Washington, the president landed in Afghanistan for a stay of just a few hours, all in darkness. He flew by helicopter from Bagram Air Field to the capital, where he was meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and with his Cabinet, at the presidential palace. In addition to talks with Afghan leaders, Obama planned to meet with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander, and the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. He also was to speak with American troops.

Even as he landed, the war in Afghanistan continues to take its toll. The number of US troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of this year compared to the same period last year. Two U.S. Marines were killed on Wednesday. A British soldier was killed Saturday in a suicide car bombing in southern Afghanistan. Three Australian soldiers have been wounded in two separate incidents. Roadside bomb blasts in southern Helmand province have killed six civilians and woulded 11 more on Sunday. NATO-led International Security Assistance Force acknowledged responsibility for killing two civilians and wounding four in Khost province in an incident on Thursday. The force said it a statement it had accidentally struck the civilians with shells when returning fire against insurgents. Much of the war news from Afghanistan is temporarily being restricted due to a clamp down on media and self-imposed restrictions.

The Pentagon's request for a $33 billion war supplemental for Afghanistan has Congress concerned about long-term costs. Training Afghan security forces, for instance, could take years. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared before Senate appropriators to defend the war supplemental, which is on top of the $708 billion baseline budget submitted to Congress in February. “We are in this intense phase that will be several years,” Ms. Clinton said in answer to Senator George Voinovich’s question about how many years U.S. troops would stay in Afghanistan. “Obviously, I don’t know that either of us could put a timeline on it. What we’re trying to do simultaneously is clear territory from the Taliban, be able to work more closely with the Afghan army, and at the same time create more capacity.”

Five Pakistani soldiers and at least 21 militants have been killed in a battle in the northwestern tribal region of Orakzai on Friday. The violence followed a series of air strikes that killed at least 50 people, most of them suspected militants, in Orakzai Thursday. On Saturday, Army helicopter gunships destroyed two militant hideouts and killed nine "insurgents" in attacks. Three militants and a soldier were killed in a clash in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border. Authorities found six bullet-riddled bodies of Afghan refugees, kidnapped three days ago by suspected Islamist militants in the Kurram. posted 28 March, 2010

Iraq killings continue; More $ for war; CIA could face war crimes prosecution

Five Iraqi soldiers were shot execution-style at a checkpoint near Baghdad, authorities said on Wednesday, in the latest sign of rising tensions as Iraq prepares to release the results of the March 7 election. The Iraqi army surrounded the town of Radwaniya west of Baghdad, where the attack occurred late on Tuesday.

In Mosul on Wednesday, one person was killed and eight others wounded in three separate roadside bomb blasts. Seven people, including four children, also were wounded in Mosul in a mortar attack targeting the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Two bombs placed near a police station wounded three policemen on Wednesday in a town near the city of Ramadi.

On Thursday, a 17-year-old suicide bomber blew himself up in the house of Colonel Waleed Mohammed, who heads the Department of Fighting Terrorism in the town of Hit. A roadside bomb went off near the house of a commander in a government-backed local militia, killing him and wounding two of his followers in al-Ray district in southwestern Baghdad. Gunmen killed a woman and her daughter in their house in southeastern Baghdad's Diyala bridge area. Gunmen threw a hand grenade at a police patrol wounding two policemen in southwestern Kirkuk.

In Afghanistan, three NATO soldiers have been killed in the past two days. Two mine clearers were killed and two others injured when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan.

Pakistani military airstrikes killed 61 suspected militants in an area near the Afghan border Thursday, including dozens at a seminary where Taliban commanders were believed to be meeting. The jet fire rained in two spells during the day in the Mamuzai area of Orakzai including targeting a mosque and school.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates testified before Congress today asking for more money for war. They testified before the House Appropriations Committee in support of the $549 billion fiscal 2011 base budget proposal and funding requests for overseas contingency operations during 2011 and the rest of fiscal 2010. The latter two requests, for $159 billion and $33 billion, respectively, primarily fund operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The budget requests support warfighters with more funding to support U.S. Special Operations Command, develop and field a next-generation ground combat vehicle, grow two more Army combat aviation brigades and continue rotary-wing production.

The US government's refusal to offer a legal rationale for using unmanned drones to kill suspected militants in Pakistan could result in CIA officers facing prosecution for war crimes in foreign courts, a legal expert has told lawmakers. "Prominent voices in the international legal community" were increasingly impatient with Washington's silence on the CIA's bombing raids in Pakistan and elsewhere, Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University, told a congressional panel on Tuesday. "Now, maybe the answer is: This is all really terrible and illegal and anybody that does it should go off to the Hague. But if that's the case, then we should not be having the president saying that this is the greatest thing since whatever. That seems like a bad idea," Anderson said. In written testimony, Anderson told the subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee that officials and legal advisers at the CIA or the national security council who create "target lists" could face possible charges abroad over the drone war.

The drone strikes have surged since Obama took office more than a year ago and have become the weapon of choice in Washington's fight against Al-Qaeda, despite concerns over civilian casualties and public anger in Pakistan. Representative John Tierney, chair of the subcommittee on national security, said that the drone war raised an array of unanswered questions, including "if the United States uses unmanned weapons systems, does that require an official declaration of war or an authorization for the use of force?". posted 25 March, 2010

Iraqi politics heats up; Helicopter crash in Afghanistan; NATO deaths up

Iraqi challenger Iyad Allawi said yesterday he would not accept a return to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's "one-man rule," indicating a long struggle in the shaping of a new government following the March 7 election. The latest results of a parliamentary poll show a tight race between the Shiite prime minister, who was edging slightly ahead, and Allawi, who was dominating mostly Sunni provinces.

On Tuesday Iraq's two main Shi'ite political blocs, one led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and another whose leaders have close ties to Iran, said they discussing a merger. A union between Maliki's State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance, two of the top three vote-getters in Iraq's March 7 parliamentary election, could sideline secularist former premier Iyad Allawi and could widen Iraq's sectarian divide.

In Afghanistan, a NATO helicopter crashed Tuesday on the outskirts of Wardak town with Turkish soldiers on board. At least 3 soldiers were injured. A witness said the chopper's rotor blades had apparently clipped the side of the hill, after which it began to spin out of control while hovering just above the ground.

The number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year has risen to 131 with the death of a soldier in a Taliban-style bomb attack in the country's south, NATO said Tuesday -- compared with 78 for the first quarter of 2009. A Canadian soldier wounded in Afghanistan two weeks ago has died of his injuries in a Canadian hospital, the military announced Monday. A British soldier was also killed by an IED on Monday in Southern Afghanistan.

One man was killed and four wounded when a bomb concealed in a auto-rickshaw exploded in the southwestern city of Quetta, Pakistan on Monday. In the same city, the principal of a private high school was gunned down early in the morning by assailants riding a motorbike. posted 23 March, 2010

War violence continues; New Bagram Gitmo? Secret British torture camp

Violence continued to plague Iraq even as thousands of peace activists throughout the U.S. continued their war protests as the war in Iraq entered its 8th year. At least 8 protesters were arrested outside of the White House.

In Iraq, abomb attached to a minibus wounded five people in central Baghdad. In Mosul, a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol wounding five soldiers. A policeman was wounded after a hand grenade was thrown at a police patrol. A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol wounded two soldiers and two civilians in Western Mosul. On Sunday, aroadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded two others in southern Baghdad. Unknown gunmen fired at a government official wounding him and his driver. A commander of a neighbourhood guard unit was killed along with his wife in their home by unknown gunmen in a city northeast of Fallujah. A hand grenade hurled at an American army patrol, wounded two Iraqi civilians in western Mosul. A roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol, wounding two soldiers. An off-duty Iraqi soldier and an elderly man were killed in two other incidences.

At least ten people picnicking by a stream in Helmand Province, Afghanistan to celebrate the Afghan new year were killed and another 7 injured in a suicide bomb attack on Sunday. A suicide bomber on a three-wheeled motorcycle had apparently been trying to blow up an Afghan army convoy, but missed his target. In eastern Khost province, which borders Pakistan, a roadside bomb -- a favoured weapon of the Taliban-linked insurgents -- killed two construction company guards and wounded three other people.

Missiles fired from U.S. drones Sunday killed at least four people in the Inzar village of North Waziristan tribal district near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Near Mir Ali town, Taliban militants beheaded three men they accused of spying for US forces stationed across the border in Afghanistan. A police vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the southwestern city of Quetta, killing three people, including the driver. Military gunship helicopters pounded Taliban hideouts in the northwestern Orakzai tribal region, killing five militants.

The White House is considering whether to detain international terrorism suspects at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, senior U.S. officials said, an option that would lead to another prison with the same purpose as Guantanamo Bay, which it has promised to close. The idea, which would require approval by President Obama, already has drawn resistance from within the government. Army Gen. Stanley A. McCrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and other senior officials strongly oppose it, fearing that expansion of the U.S. detention facility at Bagram air base could make the job of stabilizing the country even tougher. Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them. Bagram remains controversial in Afghanistan because of documented cases of detainee abuse there, including two deaths, in the early months of the Afghan war. The original prison was recently replaced by a new detention facility on the U.S. base

Fresh evidence has emerged that British military intelligence ran a secret operation in Iraq which authorised degrading and unlawful treatment of prisoners. Documents reveal that prisoners were kept hooded for long periods in intense heat and deprived of sleep by defence intelligence officers. They also reveal that officers running the operation claimed to be answerable only "directly to London". The revelations will further embarrass the British government, which last month was forced to release documents showing it knew that UK resident and terror suspect Binyam Mohamed had been tortured in Pakistan. The latest documents emerged during the inquiry into Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel worker beaten to death while in the custody of British troops in September 2003. posted 21 March, 2010

Antiwar protests continue; Iraq violence; 10,000 Marines can't pacify Helmand; Pakistan refusing to hand over Taliban

Antiwar protests are scheduled throughout the U.S. and around the world on Saturday - the 7th anniversary of the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Iraq war has already outlasted World War II, World War I, and the U.S. Civil War and, along with the war in Afghanistan, could end up being the costliest in U.S. history. In the words of Texan Molly Ivins, "every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. ...We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'" More and more military vets are joining in the protests along with a wide variety of peace and human rights organizations. In Washington, DC, a protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,will begin with a noon rally in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House, followed by a march led by Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in Iraq in 2005. Maggie Pondolfino, a representative of Military Families Speak Out whose son is currently in Afghanistans says, "I'm the proud mother of an active-duty infantry soldier. . . . We love and support our troops. And it is because we do that we will vocally show our opposition whenever our government sends them to ill-advised, immoral, unwinnable wars."

Never about bringing democracy, improving the living conditions of Iraqis and Afghans, nor eliminating weapons of mass destruction, these battlefields are part of the U.S.'s "projection of force" around the world in a vain attempt to establish mlitary and political dominance over a region with vast oil and natural gas resources and to break the OPEC cartel. The citizens of the impacted countries are only pawns in a global chess game.

In a visit to Hong Kong on Friday, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she "regretted" the Bush administration failed to work closer with Iraqis to rebuild the war-torn country. Rice served George W. Bush as national security adviser and later as America's chief diplomat. She now is a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution research group at Stanford University. The invasion, and its aftermath, destabilized the entire nation and created escalating levels of violence.

On Friday in Baghdad, a bomb on a motorcycle went off near a market in Sadr City, killing three people and wounding seven. Rice served Bush as national security adviser and later as America's chief diplomat. Gunmen stormed an off-duty policeman's house and killed him in the Doura district. In Mosul, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one soldier and wounded three others. Iraqi soldiers accompanied by U.S. advisers claim they killed a senior leader of al-Qaeda and captured six of his associates on Thursday.

In Afghanistan, continued militancy and conflicts are claiming more than 100 people's lives with overwhelming of them non-combatants as the U.S. occupation continues into its 9th year. Much has changed, but much remains the same.. The facts on the ground today are that the Taliban (or the insurgency) now controls large swathes of the country - even running parallel administrations. U.S. political and military leaders keep claiming "progress". Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans continue to suffer in this nation - one of the poorest on earth.

In Helmand Province, 10,000 marines are apparently not enough to pacify the Taliban. Operation Moshtarek continues, there are reports that 3 of the 13 districts still remain in Taliban control. The newly-appointed police chief of Baghran district can't even get to his job and phones in commands out of an office in Lashkar Gah. In Musa Qala district, the government controls the main town but the Taliban hold weekly court sessions in the rest of the district to settle property and other disputes. "The Taliban are not gone (from Marjah). They have only gone to the other districts of Grishk and Sangin," says former Helmand Gov. Sher Mohammed Akhundzada.

Michael D. Furlong, the senior Defense Department employee under investigation for allegedly running an unauthorized intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan, says his now-suspended program was fully authorized by top U.S. military commanders. According to Furlong, the program, which began in late 2008, was requested by Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and approved by the U.S. Central Command. Most of the contractors hired by Furlong for the $24.8 million program -- one of the military's many "information operations" programs in the region -- were, like Furlong, Special Operations retirees.

In Pakistan on Friday, two people were killed and two wounded when suspected separatist militants fired at a mini-bus belonging to a military training school in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. Militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at a police checkpoint in the Mohmand region on the Afghan border but there were no casualties.

Pakistan is refusing to hand over captured Taliban leaders to Afghanistan on the grounds that they could be released or transferred to the U.S. The refusal to extradite Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's deputy leader and military commander, together with several regional insurgent commanders seized by Pakistani forces in recent weeks, has deepened uncertainty over Islamabad's motives. Mediators involved in back-channel talks with the Taliban say that Baradar took part in the dialogue and appeared interested in a negotiated peace. There had been speculation that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) had arrested Baradar in Karachi last month because of those talks, and because he had bypassed Pakistan. posted 19 March, 2010

War in Pakistan heats up; 6 US casualties in Iraq, 2 UK in Afghanistan; New "Northern Offensive"; IED attacks up

At least two civilians, one of them a woman, were killed by firing from Pakistani security forces in north-west Pakistan on Thursday. The incident happened in the tribal region of Darra Adamkhel, when troops fired at two passenger buses that were breaking a curfew. On Wednesday night, more than 50 militants armed with heavy weapons attacked a checkpoint on the border between Darra Adamkhel and the north-western city of Peshawar. The security forces returned fire, sparking clashes that continued all night. On Thursday morning, the security forces imposed a curfew on the road through Darra Adamkhel and started a search operation. Officials say the two buses were presumably unaware of the curfew.

Two missile strikes by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft on Wednesday killed at least nine "militants" in Pakistan's North Waziristan. Pakistani security forces on Wednesday killed five militants including two Taliban commanders who were wanted over an uprising in the northwestern Swat valley.

Imran Khan has warned that the Pakistani army's offensive in the tribal areas is pushing the country to the brink of “civil war”. He also blamed US-Pakistan military attacks in the areas bordering Afghanistan for creating the Pakistan Taliban, in the comments in London's Evening Standard paper on Wednesday. “They were like a bull in a china shop, fighting one or two guerrillas with aerial bombing of villages. “That turned people against the army and a new phenomenon was created: the Pakistan Taliban.” For Khan, who leads a marginal force in Pakistani politics Tehrik-i-Insaf (Movement for Justice), the way to deal with militants is through boosting state help for the poor. “You will have no problem with extremists in Pakistan if you have democracy with a welfare state,” he told an audience in London.

One U.S. soldier has been killed in combat in Baghdad on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the U.S. military said two American pilots died in a helicopter crash in Iraq on Saturday, during a "hard landing" in the Salahuddin province north of Baghdad as the U.S. occupation extends into it 7th year. Also, the one soldier died and three more were injured during a roll-over accident while on patrol in northern Iraq on Monday. Two British soldiers were killed by an IED in Southern Afghanistan on Tuesday.

On Thursday in Iraq, the decapitated bodies of a policeman and a soldier were found about an hour after they were abducted by gunmen in the town of Shirqat. Gunmen killed a truck driver and wounded his son in southern Mosul. Two boys were wounded when they were playing with an explosive object in northern Mosul. Gunmen stormed a house and killed a 24-year-old woman in eastern Mosul. Gunmen threw a hand grenade at an Iraqi army patrol wounding two civilians on Wednesday. In Baghdad, Gunmen killed a man in the Shaab district. Two roadside bombs wounded six people near an Iraqi army patrol, including two soldiers, on Wednesday in Baghdad's northern Waziriya district. Gunmen using silencers wounded an official working with the Iraq Human Rights ministry in the Ghazaliya district. Gunmen also detonated a bomb near a house and wounded two civilians in Abu Ghraib.

In Afghanistan, Afghan forces shot dead two would-be suicide bombers who planned to storm an office used by foreigners in the provincial capital of southern Helmand on Wednesday. An unidentified gunman shot dead a senior Afghan provincial official in Ghazni's town late on Tuesday. At least 12 people were killed in a series of explosions in various parts of Afghanistan on Monda.

The NATO military alliance is planning a large-scale offensive in northern Afghanistan this year against Taliban insurgents in Kunduz Province, a senior German general was quoted as saying on Thursday. He declined to give details but said that it would be on a "similar" scale to the offensive currently underway in the southern province of Helmand involving 15,000 US, NATO and Afghan troops. Operations to push the Taliban out of their iconic Afghan stronghold of Kandahar are also underway, the commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, said Wednesday.

Taliban fighters more than doubled the number of homemade bombs they used against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan last year, relying on explosives that are often far more primitive than the ones used in Iraq. The embrace of a low-tech approach by Taliban-trained bombmakers -- they are building improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, out of fertilizer and diesel fuel -- has stymied a $17 billion U.S. counteroffensive against the devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials say. Electronic scanners or jammers, which were commonly deployed in Iraq, can detect only bombs with metal parts or circuitry. U.S. military officials said they expected the number of IED attacks to climb further this year as 40,000 U.S. and NATO esclate the war in Afghanistan. posted 18 March, 2010

US prison turned over to Iraqis; USAF drone kills 10; Sahil Saeed released; Obama escalation will be "difficult"; War for TAPI Gas pipeline

The U.S. military handed over a $107 million prison with 2,900 inmates to the Iraqi government on Monday as it prepares to leave Iraq seven years after the initial invasion. The formal transfer of the detention center at Camp Taji, a sprawling U.S. base north of Baghdad, is part of a plan to unwind a U.S. occupation detention program in Iraq that cost $500 million a year at its peak and incarcerated tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens. U.S. officials did not allow reporters to tour the facility. U.S. forces have taken into custody about 90,000 people since the 2003 invasion, in Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and other prisons. The last, Camp Cropper located near Baghdad airport, will be turned over to Iraq on July 15.

Violence continued in Iraq on Tuesday. Eight people were killed and 11 wounded when two sticky bombs exploded in separate attacks five minutes apart in the town of Mussayab, 40 miles south of Baghdad. A soldier was killed by a gunman at a checkpoint in western Mosul. In Baghdad, a bomb attached to a car wounded three people. One roadside bomb wounded three policemen in northern Baghdad and another roadside bomb wounded two civilians in Baghdad's central Karrada district.

A US drone missile strike and clashes between gunmen and tribesmen killed at least 20 "militants on" Tuesday in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border. The five missiles hit a compound near Datta Khel village, 12 miles west of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, killing at least 10 people. More than 830 people have been killed in more than 90 US strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, with a surge in the past year by President Barack Obama as he escalates the war. Elsewhere in the tribal belt, a gunfight between militants and local tribesmen killed at least 10 rebels and wounded another seven in the Kurram district.

Kidnappers released 5-year-old Sahil Saeed unharmed Tuesday almost two weeks after abducting him from his grandparents' house in central Pakistan. Saeed was found in a small village in Punjab province, some 20 miles southeast of Jhelum city where armed robbers seized him on March 4. The boy was examined by a doctor, Hafeezur Rehman, who said he looked "healthy and happy." "There was no sign of depression on his face," Rehman told The Associated Press. "He was playing with toys at a government rest house when I examined him."

Gen. David Petraeus says that the Obama Administrations war escalation plans in Afghanistan will result in fighting that is "likely get harder before it gets easier" and predicts 2010 will be a difficult year. Petraeus, who heads the U.S. Central Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. He said he "expects" U.S. forces will be able to reverse the momentum gained by Taliban militants in Afghanistan, but Petraeus also said he envisions "tough fighting and periodic setbacks," in the war already in its 9th year.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has brought most U.S. special-operations forces under his direct control for the first time, out of concern over continued civilian casualties and disorganization among units in the field. "What happens is sometimes at cross-purposes — you got one hand doing one thing and one hand doing the other, both trying to do the right thing but working without a good outcome," McChrystal said. Critics, including Afghan officials, human-rights workers and some field commanders of conventional U.S. forces, say that special-operations forces have been responsible for a large number of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and operate by their own rules. U.S. Vice Adm. Greg Smith says the move will integrate almost all of the 20,000 U.S. troops serving in eastern Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Disaster into the 90,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Smith said Tuesday that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan who leads both forces, wants to bring "unity of command" to the war and avoid having allied elements working at cross-purposes.

Efforts are underway to revive the TAPI gas pipeline project involving India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan during a meeting in Ashkhabad next month. Experts from the four countries will meet in Turkmenistan's capital on April 17-18 to discuss the $4 billion pipeline's route and the volume of gas that Turkmenistan can supply to India and Pakistan. The pipeline is one reason for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. It will stretch nearly 1,000 miles from Turkmenistan's southeastern Daulatabad gas field to the Indian city of Bikaner and run through Afghanistan's Helmand province and Pakistan's Waziristan province. Several Texas energy companies are expected to participate in the project as well.

Iran and Pakistan signed a deal in Turkey on Tuesday paving the way for construction to start on a much-delayed natural-gas pipeline connecting the two nations in a move that has been opposed by Washington as undermining sanctions efforts against Tehran. Pakistan has argued the pipeline, which will connect Iran's South Pars gas field with Pakistan's Baluchistan and Sindh provinces, is crucial to averting a growing energy crisis that is already causing severe electricity shortages. posted 16 March, 2010

Iraq election counts continue; Bagram base attacked; US hired private hit men

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pulled ahead on Sunday in early results of an election Iraqis hoped would end years of sectarian strife, but a divided vote suggested long and fraught talks to form a government are ahead. Early results showed Maliki's State of Law bloc ahead in seven of 18 provinces, with the Iraqiya list headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in second place, leading in five. The Iraqi National Alliance (INA), Maliki's main competitor among Iraq's Shi'ite majority, trailed close behind. The early results represent more than 3 million votes of about 12 million cast. Final results are not expected for weeks.

A suicide car bomber killed seven people and wounded 29 others when his vehicle exploded in a busy street Monday during the morning rush hour in Fallujah. In Mosul, armed men killed a prison guard in front of his home. An Iraqi soldier was wounded when gunmen threw a bomb at his checkpoint. An IED went off, killing one civilian, in the centre of the city. Gunmen threw a hand grenade at a police checkpoint near a church, wounding a Christian civilian.

An early morning rocket attack on the largest U.S. military hub in Afghanistan killed one American Monday. The attack targeted the sprawling Bagram Air Field, north of the capital of Kabul. Bagram is home to some 24,000 military personnel and civilian contractors supporting Operation Enduring Disaster. The U.S. Air Force says a remote-piloted drone crashed on takeoff in southern Afghanistan on Monday.

Also on Monday, Afghan authorities say security forces have killed five militants suspected of planning to carry out suicide bombings in the Barmal district of Paktika province.

Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants, according to military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States. The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Military officials said that Mr. Furlong would often boast about his network of informants in Afghanistan and Pakistan to senior military officers, and in one instance said a group of suspected militants carrying rockets by mule over the border had been singled out and killed as a result of his efforts. It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. Officials said Mr. Furlong’s secret network might have been improperly financed by diverting money from a program designed to merely gather information about the region. Col. Kathleen Cook, a spokeswoman for United States Strategic Command, which oversees Mr. Furlong’s work, declined to make him available for an interview. Military officials said Mr. Furlong, a retired Air Force officer, is now a senior civilian employee in the military, a full-time Defense Department employee based at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. posted 15 March, 2010

3 US casualties in Iraq; 97 Pakistani casualties, 82 Afghan

One U.S. soldier was killed and two wounded in a rocket or mortar attack on an American military base in central Iraq on Sunday.

Elsewhere in Iraq, an Iraqi soldier was wounded when gunmen threw a bomb at his checkpoint in the city of Mosul. A policeman was killed an a civilian injured in two other Mosul attacks. Two policemen were wounded by a so-called 'sticky bomb' stuck onto their vehicle in Kirkuk. A police officer was seriously wounded on Saturday in an explosion that took place as he tried to defuse a bomb in central Kirkuk. In Baghdad's Shula district, a pair of roadside bombs targeting an Iraqi police patrol killed two people and wounded 19, including four policemen, late on Saturday.

The spreading war continued in Afghanistan on Sunday as helicopter gunships pounded Taliban hideouts in Pakistan's Orakzai region Sunday, killing at least 13 "militants". The gunships targeted hideouts in Ferozkhel, a village on the outskirts of Kalyal. A truck loaded with explosives was seized Sunday morning in Attack of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province. On Saturday, a suicide bomber driving a motorized rickshaw blew himself up at a security checkpoint in the small town of Saidu Sharif in the Swat Valley killing 14 and wounding 65 more, a day after a series of bombings brought chaos and bloodshed to the city of Lahore.

A series of explosions rocked southern Afghanistan's volatile Kandahar province on Saturday, killing at least 35 people and wounding 47 others. One of the explosions struck near the police headquarters in Kandahar. Another blast struck near the province's prison and caused the collapse of some residences. posted 14 March, 2010

143 Pakistani casualties; Iraqi human rights abuses grow; US soldier dies

A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday, killing at least 43 people in Lahore and wounding about 100, police said. It was the fourth major attack in Pakistan this week. The bombers, who were on foot, struck RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighborhood where several security agencies have facilities. The attacks show that the loose network of insurgents angry with Islamabad for its alliance with the U.S. retain the ability to strike throughout Pakistan despite pressure from army offensives and American missile strikes against militant targets.

Two people were killed and three injured when a bomb, hidden in a bus, went off in Kerbala, Iraq on Friday. The blast followed afternoon prayers in the city. A policeman was killed and two others were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol in Dhraa Dijla area east of Fallujah on Thursday. Two people were wounded in attacks in Mosul.

As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq, the State Department is blaming the Iraqi government for arbitrary killings of civilians and other human rights abuses. The department's annual human rights report, released Thursday, also highlighted abuses in Afghanistan, another country where American troops are battling an insurgency. Civilians suffered the most when violence in Afghanistan spiked last year.

A U.S. soldier was killed by an IED in southern Afghanistan on Friday as the Pentagon sets the agenda for a wider 12- to 18-month campaign in the areas of Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar province. The United States and NATO currently have 121,000 troops in Afghanistan, rising to 150,000 by August, mostly for the campaign in the south. More bloodshed, refugees and wasted tax dollars can be expected.

Also on Friday, insurgents attacked a police post in eastern Afghanistan with guns and then detonated a roadside bomb as reinforcements sped to the scene, killing three members of an elite strike force. Gunmen launched the attack on a post outside Gardez, the provincial capital, on Thursday night. When the rapid-response force rushed to aid the fight, the militants detonated a roadside bomb as their vehicle passed. India on Friday decided to rush 40 ITBP commandos to strife-torn Afghanistan for protection of its people and assets. posted 12 March, 2010

World Vision Pak attack; 6 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan as U.S. Reps vote for longer war; U.S. troops kill 2 Iraqis

Militants armed with assault rifles and a homemade bomb attacked the offices of a U.S.-based World Vision aid group helping earthquake survivorsnear the town of Oghi in the Mansehra district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six Pakistani employees. The assault prompted World Vision, a humanitarian group, to suspend its operations in Pakistan. "It was a brutal and senseless attack," said Dean Owen, World Vision spokesman in Seattle.

Two missile strikes by US drone aircraft have killed at least 12 suspected militants in North Waziristan, with more bodies recovered from the wreckage on Thursday. Wednesday's first strike took place at Mizar Madakhel village, some 30 miles west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan. This was followed by a second attack in the same area. More than 700 people have died in nearly 80 drone strikes since August 2008.

A suicide attack inside an Afghan police base in southeastern Paktika province on Wednesday, wounding nine officers on Wednesday.

An explosion hit a joint compound of Afghan Border police and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in southeastern Khost province killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded at least 4 others late Tuesday night, the military alliance said Wednesday. Five civilians, including four children, were killed on Thursday by a roadside bomb in in Taqab district of Kapisa province.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected a measure calling for President Barack Obama to pull U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Sixty-five lawmakers voted for the pullout resolution while 356 voted against. Supporters of the resolution said it was time for U.S. lawmakers to consider if they wanted to continue the nearly nine-year-old war in which about 1,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. "Unless this Congress acts to claim its constitutional responsibility, we will stay in Afghanistan for a very, very long time at great cost to our troops and to our national priorities," Rep. Dennis Kucinich said. Congress passed a resolution authorizing military force in Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks by al Qaeda on the United States. Rep. Patrick Kennedy denounced the "despicable" US media on Wednesday, charging it was aiding those who favor war by ignoring the war and the war debate. "The press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance, and that's the laying of lives down" in the Afghan war, he said.

In Iraq, preliminary results from Sunday's election show the grouping of PM Nouri Maliki is leading in two southern provinces, the electoral body says. The commission results showed Mr Maliki's State of Law coalition with 124,734 votes in the two provinces with at least 30% of votes counted, followed by 103,583 for the Shia-dominated Iraqi National Alliance. The partial results from Najaf and Babil, in the Shia south, are the first released - four days after balloting. Full initial results, which will be made public when 30% of the ballots are counted, could be released later by the Independent High Electoral Commission. Final results for all 18 provinces are not expected for a fortnight. About 6,200 candidates from 86 factions campaigned for seats in the 325-member parliament. Even as the results were about to be broadcast, one of the Iraqi National Alliance’s leaders, the former exile Ahmed Chalabi, called the vote-counting process itself into question, challenging both the transparency of the ballot counting and the computerized system being used to tabulate the votes.

War-driven violence continues throughout Iraq. On Wednesday, U.S. troops fired at a civilian car, killing the two people, a man and a woman in Baghdad. Two people were wounded, including one soldier, when a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol late on Wednesday in western Mosul. On Thursday, two Iraqis were wounded by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad. A traffic police officer and a gunman were killed and two gunmen were wounded in a shootout on Abu Nawas Street in central Baghdad on Tuesday. posted 11 March, 2010

UK war crimes inquiry; Gates, Ahmadinejad in Afghanistan; 77 Pak casualties

Britain is opening a new inquiry into claims that its soldiers murdered and abused civilians in southern Iraq in 2004. Several Iraqis claim they were abused at a base called Camp Abu Naji in Maysan province after a battle between British troops and insurgents. Lawyers claim up to 20 Iraqis were tortured and executed by British troops. The uncle of one of the dead, 19-year-old Hamid Al-Sweady, is suing the Ministry of Defense along with five other Iraqis. Britain is also holding an investigation into the death of a hotel receptionist in Basra in 2003 and a separate wide-ranging public inquiry into the war.

Iraq’s election commission announced that 62 percent of Iraqis voted in Sunday's elections, though only 53 percent cast ballots in Baghdad, which was struck by a wave of violence as polls opened. Iraq announced that preliminary vote totals will be released on Wednesday.

U.S. Secretary of War, Robert Gates visited a small, remote outpost 30 miles north of Kandahar, where the Fort Lewis, Washington-based Stryker unit has lost 22 men and suffered an additional 62 wounded since arriving. Gates praised the troops and later walked a dusty street in Now Zad. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed three Afghan policemen and one passer-by in the border town of Spin Boldak. Another British soldier was been killed near Sangin. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit Afghanistan on Wednesday.

Missiles fired by a US drone aircraft into a local bazaar killed at least three suspected militants in in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, Pakistan on Sunday. The dead and six others who were injured in the attack were local militants affiliated to a group led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, Pakistani officials said. On Monday, a suicide car bomber Monday struck a building where police interrogate "high-value" suspects in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore, killing at least 13 people and wounding 61 more including women taking children to school.

A five-year-old British boy kidnapped in Pakistan nearly a week ago is alive and police are making progress in the investigation, a police official said on Tuesday. Sahil Saeed, who is of Pakistani origin, was abducted last Thursday after gunmen barged into his grandmother's house, held the family at gun-point for hours and then left with some valuables and the boy. "The child is safe. We made some progress and hopefully, we'll sort out this case soon," said Khalid Mehmood, police superintendent for investigations. posted 09 March, 2010

2 Americans, 2 Brits dead in Afghanistan; Millions of Iraqis vote

Two U.S. soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, one by an IED and there by small arms fire. Two U.K. soldiers were killed on Saturday as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Camp Bastion in the south. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will travel to neighboring Afghanistan on Monday for talks with his counterpart Hamid Karzai.

At least 60 militants and an unknown number of civilians died in fighting between the Taliban and a rival Islamic group in northern Afghanistan. The fighting between the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami, which began in Baghlan province Saturday, apparently stems from a rivalry over control of local villages and taxes they generate. Hezb-e-Islami is now the second-biggest militant group in Afghanistan, behind the Taliban.

The polls are closed in Iraq. Millions of Iraqis turned out to vote on Sunday in fair and but sometimes violent elections throughout the country. About 19 million Iraqis are registered to vote. There are more than 6,200 candidates competing for 325 seats in the new parliament, Iraq's second for a full term since the US-led invasion seven years ago this month. In the places where there was violence, particularly Baghdad, the attacks seemed to have initially depressed early turnout. But, election observers reported that in the afternoon once-empty polling stations were jammed with defiant voters. “The bombings, it seems, provoked the people to vote,” said one official. In Kirkuk, a divided city and region, Kurds began celebrating even before the polls closed. Cars clogged the streets, their passengers waving Kurdish flags. An official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Rizar Rashid, predicted that the main Kurdish alliance had won at least 45 percent of the vote in the region. Such an outcome, if true, could intensify the political struggle over control of the province, which Kurds claim as part of their autonomous region.

On Saturday, cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, speaking at a rare news conference, urged Iraqis to take part in Sunday's election to help pave the way for Iraq's "liberation" from U.S. forces. "Although holding elections under the shadow of occupation does not have legitimacy, I ask the Iraqi people to take part in the election as a political resistance move so that the ground is prepared for occupiers to leave Iraq," Sadr said. In Salahuddin province, where Saddam is buried, Sunni residents seem almost resentful about voting, but resigned to turning up at polling stations to try and reclaim lost political ground. "The people here are looking to improve their situation," said Mutather Alwan, the governor of Salahuddin. "This government has done nothing for them, so we will turn out in numbers to restore our rights. People are now far more knowledgable than they were in 2005." After the last national election in 2005, it took the various political parties about five months to agree on a prime minister and for a cabinet to be approved.

However, some violence continued. At least 14 people died in north-eastern Baghdad when an explosion leveled a building, and mortar attacks in western neighbourhoods of the capital killed seven people. In Mahmoudiyaa bomb inside a polling station killed a policeman. mortars toward the Green Zone, home to the US embassy and the prime minister's office. In the Sunni stronghold of Azamiyah, police reported at least 20 mortar attacks since dawn. On Saturday, a car bomb detonated in the holy city of Najaf near the Shrine of Imam Ali and killed at least three and wounded 50. A member of the provincial council of Mosul, Qusay Abbas, was shot dead in the disputed area of Shabak.

Pakistani officials said Saturday that Maulvi Faqir Mohamed, a top Pakistan Taliban leader, was likely killed in an airstrike Friday in northwestern Pakistan along with other Taliban leaders. posted 07 March, 2010

Brown claims Iraq war was "right"; 3 Americans dead in Afghanistan; War continues to spill into Pakistan

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Friday faced allegations that he jeopardized soldiers lives by under-funding the military when he was finance minister, as he gave evidence to a public inquiry into the Iraq war. Brown both claims that the war was "right" and that the didn't cut short funding for the troops. Former President George W Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, has claimed that Bush would not have ordered the invasion of Iraq had he not been "misled" on the topic of WMDs. Tony Blair's story of his spectacular rise and fall as PM is expected to land him £5million (instead of going to prison as a war criminal, as he should).

A series of bomb attacks disrupted voting as the polls opened in Iraq's national elections Thursday, leaving a total of 12 people dead and another 47 wounded. Early voting began Thursday for those who will be unable to cast their ballots in Sunday's election, including thousands of army and security personnel. At least 2 million Iraqi refugees living outside of the country have begun balloting as well. In the first of three attacks, five civilians were killed and 22 injured when a bomb went off in the Hurriya neighborhood of northern Baghdad. In the al-Mansour district of western Baghdad, at least three people were killed and 25 wounded in a suicide bombing outside a polling center.