On July 6, 2002, Several US senators called for an American participation in the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan whose actions should be extended from Kabul to the whole country but the US government refused.
At the beginning of August 2002 the US troops were again accused of killing civilians. A helicopter attacked a village close to the Pakistan border, Khomi Baghicha near Zormat, killing at least one civilian and wounding two others. The US military command denied the incident, as usual but local Afghan authorities said that there were no Taliban or al-Qaida fighters there. Apparently the attack took place on the base of wrong intelligence, the US troops having been used to settle a local feud.
A large explosion in an Afghan construction depot in the eastern city of Jalalabad killed at least 25 people and injured about 80 others on August 9, 2002. Initially it was though to be a terrorist action by Taliban or al-Qaida fighters. Later on the police inquiry showed that a large quantity of explosives required for road construction blew up by accident.
On September 5, 2002, a car bomb exploded in a busy market in Kabul killing at least 30 people and injuring many more. The Afghan government said that it was the work of al-Qaida members or followers.
At the beginning of November 2002, the Human Rights Watch group said that the International Peace keepers actually based in Kabul should be deployed in all of Afghanistan where the situation is getting worse everyday. They accused a certain warlord of human rights abuses. Ismail Khan, the governor of Heart, is accused of torturing political prisoners.
Two US military bases near Gardez in eastern Afghanistan came under rocket fire on November 14, 2002. Nine 107 mm rockets were fired, but they landed outside the base. US A-10 fighters planes dropped several bombs and fired at the attackers. Hours later the base at Lwara, 110 miles southwest, also came under rocket and mortar fire, and at least one round hit the base. The US troops shot back and they sent an A-10 plane to bomb the launch site. No US soldiers were hurt but two attackers are believed to have been killed.
A rocket hit Kabul, one mile from the US Embassy, on Thursday November 21, 2002, but nobody was hurt. It isn't known who was responsible.
On November 28, 2002, some gunmen fired on an US military convoy in eastern Afghanistan. One soldier was wounded in the upper leg and the fighters escaped.
In Kabul, on December 1, 2002, a young boy, 17 years old, threw two grenades in an US Jeep wounding two US soldiers and an Afghan interpreter. The young man is said to be an Afghan Islamic militant. None of the wounded is in bad condition but they were sent to a hospital. The same day, the US was accused of unnecessarily killing civilians. The Human Right Watch said that the use of cluster bombs on populated areas killed at lest 25 civilians and injured many others.
On December 19, 2002, a man exploded a grenade outside the international peacekeeping headquarters in Kabul. The assailant was killed; two Frenchmen and two Afghan interpreters were injured, they later died. A second assailant was arrested.
In December 2002, the US military authorities decided to open 8 to 10 new bases around the country to boost reconstruction and security, and to spread the power of the government outside Kabul. The total number of US soldiers in Afghanistan would remain the same (about 18,000).
On December 21, 2002, one American soldier was killed in eastern Afghanistan by gunfire. It is the first US death from hostile fire since May 19, 2002. The seven or nine gunmen escaped. On the same day, a German helicopter crashed in Kabul killing seven German peacekeepers on board and two children on the ground (later on the children were found alive). It seems that it was an accident. The bodies of the victims were brought back to Germany on Christmas day.
On January 4, 2003, an American soldier was wounded in Eastern Afghanistan when he stepped on a landmine. His life is not in danger.
A US soldier lost a foot while a land mine he was helping to diffuse exploded at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on January 9, 2003.
On January 10, 2003, the US soldiers found a large quantity of explosive in Jalalabad. Among them there was 900 pounds of explosives, 200 rocket-propelled grenades and 180 pounds of ball bearings. They could have been used to make explosive devices.
On January 15, 2003, US Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, was in Kabul, were he called for accelerating the reconstruction of Afghanistan. He presented a new plan for using American, Afghan and, possibly, European forces to improve security in about eight more cities besides Kabul.
Three US soldiers were injured in two separate incidents in eastern Afghanistan when an US base came under rocket attack on January 16, 2003. B52 bombers were called to protect the base.
On January 20, 2003, US Special forces exchanged fire with two gunmen near an US base in Eastern Afghanistan. One of the attackers is believed to be wounded, but both escaped. No Americans was wounded.
On January 29, 2003, we were told that the US troops were fighting their biggest battle in Afghanistan since March 2002. US troops and allied forces surrounded about 80 Afghan militants in a mountain base in southeastern Afghanistan killing at least 18 terrorists and suffering no loss. The battle took place near the Afghan-Pakistan border in the Kandahar province north of the town of Spin Boldak. Some planes bombed the terrorists. The group is supposed to be associated with former Afghan Prime Minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who joined the al-Qaida and Taliban forces. It is worth remembering that the warlord Hekmatyar, a Ghilzai Pashtun, is a former US ally who was financed (and armed) by the US during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
On January 30, 2003, a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Afghanistan killing four US soldiers. It is believed that this was an accident, and not the result of fire.
On January 30, 2003, an anti-tank mine exploded near the southern city of Kandahar in Afghanistan killing 18 civilian minibus passengers. Taliban fighters or followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former US ally and now one of Afghanistan's most feared warlords, are believed to be responsible. The US soldiers are still trying to locate about 80 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's men who have been hiding in the mountains near Kandahar; 18 of them have been killed a few days ago. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is the leader of the extreme Sunni Hezb-Islami party that is linked to the remaining Taliban and al-Qaida. He is especially targeting US forces and the UN and other aid agencies' personnel. The UN has been forced to close some of its centres in eastern and southern Afghanistan as a result.
On February 10, 2003, two missiles were fired at the German peacekeeping base in Kabul, in coincidence with the handing over to Germany and the Netherlands of the leadership of the peacekeeping mission there. No damage was reported.
Around March 20, 2003, about 1,000 US soldiers backed by helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles began an assault near Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, against suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. Two so-called terrorists were killed the first day.
An Afghan deputy commander and four soldiers were wounded on April 5, 2003, in a bomb attack on an army base in eastern Afghanistan. Nobody claimed responsibility for the action but it was soon attributed to al-Qaida and the remnants of the Taliban regime.
Around April 20, about 300 rockets fell on the town of Gardez, killing and wounding more than 100 civilians. At the end of April, the shelling went on near the towns of Shulgara and Sare Pul leaving twelve people dead or wounded.
Five men suspected of killing four journalists in Afghanistan have been arrested on April 22, 2003. The dead were: the Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari; the Australian cameraman Harry Burton of Reuters; Maria Grazia Cutuli of Italy's Corriere della Sera; Julio Fuentes of El Mundo, Spain. They were in a convoy heading for Kabul in November 2002 when they were stopped and shot. The suspects, described as Taliban supporters, are said to have confessed. They will soon be put to trial.
On May 21, 2003, the US troops killed four Afghans soldiers "by mistake" and wounded four others outside the US Embassy in Kabul. The US Marines thought that they were under attack. This shows again, if it was still necessary, the total disrespect of Americans for the life of any foreigners. There were no US casualties.
In Afghanistan, a German soldier was killed by an anti-tank mine and another wounded on May 29, 2003. It is not known if the mine was new, or if it is a remain from the time of the Russian invasion.
On June 7, 2003, at least four German soldiers were killed in Kabul by a bomb while driving in a bus of the International Force (ISAF). Twenty-nine other German soldiers were wounded. This is the deadliest attack on the Peace Forces since they came to Afghanistan at the end of 2001. On June 10 it seems that the man responsible for the attack is a "Chechen", member of al-Qaida. He blew himself up driving a taxi loaded with explosives. He was coming from the training camps that still operate at the border with Pakistan where volunteers from all over the world are regrouping. It is possible that some al-Qaida members are still in Kabul, and that more attacks are in preparation.
On August 11, 2003, NATO took over control -from Germany and Netherlands- of the international security force operating in Afghanistan. Its 5,000 soldiers from 31 countries operate only in Kabul, but it is expected that their mandate will be extended to cover the whole country. This was the first time that NATO was involved in a mission outside Europe.
On August 13, 2003 a bomb killed fifteen people, including six children, near the town of Lashkargar, Helmand province, southern Afghanistan. The attack has been attributed to the Taliban. Kabul was more or less safe and prosperous at that time but outside, and especially in the south of the country, the warlords were again running the show and they are fighting between themselves. The same day, the Afghan government forces claimed that they killed 16 Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in a gun battle in the province of Khost near the Pakistani border. Two Afghan border police also died and two Arab -possibly from al-Qaida- were captured. Also, the same day, two student Taliban sympathisers were killed and another wounded in Kabul while making a bomb.
On Saturday August 16, 2003, about 400 suspected Taliban fighters took over a police station in Barmal, Southern Afghanistan, and 125 miles southeast of Kabul. According to the governor of the Paktika province, they came in a convoy of lorries from Pakistan only 5 miles away. They attacked the police station with rockets, heavy machine guns, and grenades. Seven policemen were killed as well as 15 attackers. The attackers held the building through the night before destroying it and escaping back into Pakistan. In the same province, the week before, 64 people were killed in a period of 24 hours by shooting and bombs. Two Pakistani soldiers were also killed by American soldiers who took them for Taliban fighters. Again! Colin Powell apologised to the president of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf.
On August 18, 2003, several hundred suspected Taliban attacked another police station in Tarway, Paktika province, south-east Afghanistan, killing at least 3 people. They took 4 policemen in hostage, destroyed the building and, apparently, moved back to Pakistan where they came from.
On August 25, 2003, US planes bombed a Taliban base in the mountains of southern Afghanistan killing as many as 50 fighters according to the coalition. They were helped by about 1,000 Afghan troops. This followed many attacks on loyalist Afghans that resulted in as much as 100 dead.
Two American soldiers died and one was wounded on August 31, 2003, in a gun battle near Shkin in eastern Afghanistan. Hundred of Taliban fighters were involved of which at least four were killed. This is only one of many gun battles involving Taliban that were defeated but apparently not completely eliminated.
On September 5, 2003, the US forces in Afghanistan said that they had driven a large force of Taliban rebels back to Pakistan after killing 70 to 100 of them. The Taliban, on the other hand, admitted that seven of their men were killed and 10 to 20 wounded.
On September 16, 2003, Rahim, a former Taliban police chief who lately had been leading rebel fighters near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, was shot dead by Afghan forces together with 14 of his men. Elsewhere, a junior commander, Mullah Abdur Rahman, was captured; he is now being interrogated.
On September 30, 2003, 150 French soldiers have replaced the Americans in the region of Spin Boldak near Kandahar. They will fight against the members of al-Qaida and the Taliban who are active in the region.
At the beginning of October 2003, Pakistani army attacked the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters on their side of the border with Afghanistan. From the other side, near Kandahar, the special French troops that are operating in this region entered in action too. As usual, both sides claimed victory, and said that they killed many adversaries, but the figures published are not reliable.
On November 16, 2003, the UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, condemned the killing of an UN employee in Ghazni, Afghanistan. The French woman was gunned down while in a car whose driver, an Afghan, was wounded. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, also condemned the killing. This follows the suicide car bombing the week before of the UN offices in Kandahar; fortunately nobody was killed.
On October 9, 2003, rival pro-government fractions in Afghanistan, the Uzbek Junbish and the Tajik Jamiat, agreed on a cease-fire after fighting around the northern city of Mazar-I-Sharif putting in doubt the UN disarmament plan.
On October 15, 2003, the German government decided to deploy its troops in the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. This would be the first time that some troops of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would be stationed outside Kabul.
On November 10, 2003, US troops -with planes, tanks and heavy guns- in collaboration with Pakistan, are trying to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters who are hiding in the mountains at the border between the two countries. The provinces in the southeast of Afghanistan, at the border with Pakistan, were especially dangerous. The town of Shkin, for instance, had seen many combats. The situation on the ground in Afghanistan has deteriorated markedly lately while, at the same time, the drafting of the new constitution is progressing.
In the first days of December 2003, 2,000 US soldiers with some units of the new Afghan National Army and Afghan militia launched a military operation aiming to capture or destroy the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters who still attack US troops. This operation aim also to allow the more than 500 delegates from all the country to assemble in Kabul on December 13 in a grand council, or "loya jirga," aiming to approve a new constitution.
On December 6, 2003 -St Nicholas' Day- an American air raid near Ghazni, eastern Afghanistan, killed 9 children. An American plane dropped a bomb on a site where a "known terrorist" was believed to be hiding. The body of the suspect of the killing of two foreign contractors was found, together with those of the 9 children. An investigation has been launched, as usual. And as usual the US soldiers responsible of these murders will be whitewashed. The UN senior representative in Afghanistan, Lakdhar Brahimi, requested on December 7 a serious inquiry on the air strike. He added that such attacks would increase Afghans' feelings of insecurity and fear. Local people and the Afghan police said that the target, the suspected terrorist Mullah Wazir, escaped the attack. This made the air strike even worse morally. These actions could delay even more the Afghan Constitutional Assembly that should start to work December 10. It had already been postponed from October.
On December 6, 2003, a bomb exploded in Kandahar damaging houses and shops and wounding 18 people, 7 badly. It was a terrorist attack. As usual the Taliban and al-Qaida are blamed without proof.
On December 8, the US military authorities said that they may not have killed their Taliban target, Mullah Wazir, while killing 9 children instead, 7 boys and 2 girls, the oldest 12 year old. Later, on March 10, 2004, the US military authorities absolved themselves of any blame for the death of these nine children. The targeted Taliban was not killed because the bomb hit the wrong house. The investigation revealed only that the pilot followed "appropriate" rules of engagement, but the report will not be made public for security reason. Two hundred tribal chiefs have been complaining lately in Kabul about the US soldiers' behaviour. They accused the Americans to detain and beat innocent people, and of behaving worse that the Soviet Army in the 1980s. This explains better that any words why the USA does not want to ratify the convention creating the International Criminal Court. Many of their soldiers would be brought before it.
On December 10, 2003, we were told that the USA had launched its largest military operation since the end of the Taliban regime. The aim is to keep off the Taliban and al-Qaida guerrillas to interfere with the "loya jirga" meeting due to start on December 13 to approve a new constitution.
The US soldiers, calling themselves the liberators of Afghanistan, did it again on December 10, 2003: they killed 6 more children and two adult civilians in a bombing raid on a compound in Gardez, eastern Paktia province. This brought to 15 the number of children killed in one week. Now the US soldiers in Afghanistan and in Iraq can only be described as MURDERERS. On December 11, the US military authorities in Kabul said the US soldiers involved were not responsible for the death of the 6 children since hundreds of mortars, mines, and rockets-propelled grenades were stored in the suspected militant's compound. As if the children knew that this so-called suspect's house contained ammunitions! Murderers are what they are.
On December 11, 2003, US soldiers killed four Afghans in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan while raiding a house. They also arrested a powerful commander, General Esmatullah Muabat, now military chief of the Laghman province and allied to the government. Thousand of people demonstrated in Kabul on December 12 demanding the release of General Muabat. It is not clear why the US soldiers arrested him since he is linked to the Northern Alliance and is known as an opponent to the Taliban and al-Qaida. This is part of the US actions against insurgent fighters who are suspected of trying to disrupt the Grand Council (loya jirga).
In December 2003 there were 5,500 peacekeeping soldiers in and around Kabul under NATO command in addition to 17,700 US soldiers chasing the remaining Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.
A new road between Kabul and Kandahar was opened on December 16, 2003. It is 300 miles long and now the two cities can be reached by car in 5 hours instead of the 16 to 30 hours before. However, driving on this road is still dangerous because of regular attacks by bandits and Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents.
On December 21, 2003, US military authority in Kabul said that the US would expand the deployment of its forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan to increase security to allow the country reconstruction to proceed. Lately Taliban and al-Qaida have increased their presence in these zones slowing international aid efforts.
On December 24, 2003, a bomb exploded in front of a house used by UN staff in Kabul, Afghanistan. Part of the house was destroyed but there was no victim.
On December 30, 2003, we were told of a massive US operation in southern and eastern Afghanistan involving 2,000 soldiers. More that 100 people were arrested and 10 suspected Islamic militants were killed.
On January 6, 2004, two bombs exploded in Kandahar killing at least 17 people including 11 children. In addition between 23 and 50 people were wounded. The Taliban are blamed for the explosions.
On January 8, 2004, a bomb wounded 2 Afghan soldiers in Kandahar near the spot where 15 children died a few days ago.
On January 10, 2004, four-suspected Taliban were killed near Kandahar as the bomb they carried exploded prematurely along a road patrolled by Afghan soldiers. The same day, suspected drug smugglers shot dead five Afghan soldiers. Also on January 10, a group of 20 to 30 armed men attacked a remote army border post near Shorabak in Kandahar province. Of the 10-soldier garrison, 5 were killed and two wounded.
On January 19, 2004, US planes bombed the small village of Saghatho in the Uruzgan province. The net result was the killing of 11 civilians -four children, three women, and four men- but no terrorists. After more that two year in the country this is what the Americans are still doing all the time. They dare not send soldiers, so they destroy villages the cowards! On the same day a plane killed five armed men north of Deh Rawood also in the Uruzgan province 25 miles south of Sahatho. If they were terrorists is not known. How could a plane pilot decide from very high up? Now by definition "a terrorist is a dead Afghan," just like before "a good Indian was a dead Indian". On January 20, the US military authorities said that no civilian in this raid, only 5 terrorists. It is impossible to know if they are right or not, but taking into account that the Americans do not bother about the death of foreigners ...
On January 27, 2004, a suicide bomber killed a Canadian soldier and an Afghan civilian in Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Three other Canadian soldiers and 8 civilians, including a Frenchman, were wounded in the attack on the three-jeep convoy.
On January 28, 2004, a suicide bomber drove his car into a British peacekeeping's vehicle in Kabul. The explosion killed one British soldier and wounded four others. A 14-year-old Afghan boy was also killed and three other civilians wounded. It is the second suicide attack against peacekeeping soldiers in two days. In the first one a Canadian soldier was killed and three wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks.
On January 29, 2004, we were told that the US is planning a new offensive in the two-year-old Afghanistan campaign to try to eliminate the remaining Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. The offensive should take place in the coming spring.
On January 29, 2004, there was an unexplained explosion near the city of Ghazni. Seven US soldiers were killed, three wounded and one missing. One Afghan interpreter was also wounded. This happened in a weapons cache where the soldiers were working. On January 30 the US military authorities said that the explosion was most probably accidental. More than 100 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war.
On March 7, 2004, the US troops in Afghanistan were accused by the organisation "Human Rights Watch" of killing and abusing Afghans, ignoring international laws, using excessive forces to make arrests, mistreating detainees, and keeping them in detention for a long time without access to lawyers or their families. The US intervention was justified by aiming to replace an undemocratic regime by democracy, but now they behave the same way as the Taliban did, if not worse. Helicopter gunships, small and heavy arms are used in civilian areas during normal police operations.
On March 21, 2004, the Afghan minister of civil aviation, Mirwais Sadiq, and two police officers were killed by rocket-propelled grenade. Sadiq was the son of Ismail Khan, the governor of the western Herat province. Khan used his own army to seek revenge on the government forces, and at least 100 Afghans died.
On March 30, 2004, we were told that Britain will send 100 more soldiers to Afghanistan under Nato command to help pacify the whole country and reduce the warlords' power. Thousand more soldiers will be required. Britain has 400 soldiers in the country, mostly in Kabul; it will lead a multinational group in northern Afghanistan.
On May 29, 2004, it became known that the American football star, Patrick Tillman was killed by "friendly fire" on April 22 in Afghanistan.
On May 30, 2004, four US soldiers were killed in fighting in the Zabul province in southeast Afghanistan. There too the security is still a dream.
On June 26, 2004, we were told that Nato would send up to 1,200 more soldiers in Afghanistan. The decision should be taken at the next Nato summit in Istanbul on June 28. These troops should provide some kind of security ahead of the elections foreseen for September. At the present time, there are 6,400 Nato troops in Afghanistan, but they only control the capital Kabul. In addition there are also 17,000 at least.
On June 25, 2004, Taliban gunmen shot dead 16 people in Khas Uruzgan, central
Afghanistan, because they had registered for voting in the September elections.
On June 26 a bomb exploded near Jalahabad in a minibus carrying women election
workers and children. Two women died and 13 were wounded. Rocket-propelled
grenades hit an election office in Pul-e-Alam, Logar province, setting it
on fire. This seems to be a new tactic to derail the elections that, the
Taliban believe, are intended to boost the US-backed government. More than
10 million Afghan will be called to vote but less that half have registered
until now.
On July 28, 2004, the humanitarian organisation "Médecins sans
Frontières" decided to pull out of Afghanistan after 24 years
there. They said the security had become too bad and that the life of their
workers was put at risk by the US-led coalition mixing humanitarian and
military operations (US soldiers dress in civilian clothes and drive around
in white land cruisers similar to those used by humanitarian agencies).
They also dropped leaflets saying that aid would be withdrawn unless information
on al-Qaida and the Taliban was supplied. It is the first time since its
foundation 33 years ago that the "Médecins Sans Frontières"
are pulling out of a country. This is a set-back for the Afghan government,
but also for the Americans that go on saying that the security is improving
in the country just before the presidential election foreseen for October
after having being delayed twice already. Thirty-two aid workers have been
killed since March 2002. On June 2, 2004, five more workers of the organisation
were also killed and, on July 28, one UN election worker and one civilian
wanting to register were killed. Before the killing of its five workers,
Médecins sans Frontières had 80 foreign staff in Afghanistan
and 1,400 local ones covering 13 provinces. After the attack the number
of foreigners was reduced to 15, now them too are leaving the country, and
the local staffs has been laid-off.
On August 2, 2004, two militants and four Afghan soldiers were killed in a gun battle when US and allied troops attacked a rebel stronghold in Khost. American planes and helicopters had to be brought in. This shows that peace and security are still faraway in Afghanistan.
On August 14, 2004, fighters loyal to rival warlords clashed in western Afghanistan, sending tanks into the streets of a regional capital. More than 20 fighters were killed. The US military and the US-trained troops of the Afghan national army stayed out of the fight -a sign of the central government's weakness in the face of local warlords. The clashes saw forces loyal to Herat Governor Ismail Khan, one of the country's most powerful warlords, fighting against rivals in the north, east and south of the province.
On August 16, 2004, six suspected Taliban fighters have been killed in southern Kandahar province when they ambushed a convoy of coalition and Afghan forces, convoy involved in the US-launched clean-up operation against the remnants of the organisation. The attack took place in Marof district in eastern Kandahar province. There was no casualty among the coalition and the Afghan forces. An attack helicopter was involved in the incident. The Taliban's claimed killing six government soldiers in the former Taliban stronghold.
The final days of registration (August 16, 2004) for the presidential elections coincided with fierce fighting in the western province of Herat among rival government militias. Forces loyal to provincial Governor Ismail Khan clashed with rival and about 21 people were killed. Afghanistan also faces security problems from militants loyal to the former Taliban government and its allies. Officials in the southeastern province of Kandahar say an attack by Taliban loyalists killed at least six Afghan soldiers.
On August 18, 2004, three suspected Taliban fighters including "a senior commander" were killed together with a government soldier in a raid by Afghan military forces. Acting on a tip-off, soldiers raided a compound used by suspected militants in Nawa, a troubled district in Ghazni province. Seven militants defending the compound were captured after almost two hours of gunfire.
The fifth Albanian peacekeeping force departed for Afghanistan on August 18, 2004, to implement its mission there. This contingent is made up of 22 servicemen, chosen from the Albanian rapid reaction force. Before being sent to Afghanistan, they had received special training. The Albanian servicemen will join the Turkish peacekeeping troops to implement their mission in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, and stay there for six months. Albania began to send its peacekeeping force in August 2002.
A US helicopter crashed in Afghanistan on August 19, 2004, killing one American Marine and injuring 14 others. No hostile fire was involved in the crash in Khost province, near the border with Pakistan. Four had injuries serious enough to require further evacuation to the main US base at Bagram.
A series of six bombs went off at a UN voter registration office in western Afghanistan, injuring six Afghan policemen, setting vehicles ablaze and shattering windows. It was the latest in a string of attacks targeting election workers. The blasts occurred on August 19, 2004, at a voter registration site in Farah City, near the border with Iran. There were three international UN staffers at the site at the time, but none were injured. They had finished the voter registration in the province, and were to be moved to Herat, the province directly north of Farah.
On August 21, 2004, about 80 Taliban fighters attacked a district chief's office in southern Afghanistan; a two-hour gun battle with government militia left three people dead. The insurgents launched the assault in Miana Shien district, about 90 kilometers north of Kandahar, firing assault rifles and heavy machine guns before retreating. One government militia fighter was killed and two wounded, while two Taliban were killed and three wounded.
On August 21, 2004, troops fired on a truck that attempted to run through a joint Afghan National Army and coalition checkpoint near Ghazni, killing three -one man, two women- and wounding two others. Soldiers searched the truck but did not find any weapons.
On August 23, 2004, US helicopter gunships, backed by hundreds of Afghan and US-led troops, attacked Taliban hideouts in Afghanistan's mountainous southeastern province of Khost near the Pakistan border. The attack was launched late on Sunday August 22, 2002, in the remote Shinkai area some 190 km south of Kabul after a series of recent attacks by Taliban in Khost province.
On August 23, 2004, the US military authorities apologized for the deaths of three unarmed Afghans shot by American troops after their truck failed to stop at a road checkpoint. They promised to look into ways to better safeguard the civilians they are here to protect. Afghanistan's president, a US ally who has complained in the past of heavy-handedness by American soldiers, called for a full investigation into Saturday August 21's killings and termed the unarmed victims "martyrs." The US-led coalition was investigating the incident in Ghazni province, 75 miles south of Kabul.
On August 25, 2004, we were told that Britain will send six harrier jets to Afghanistan to help provide air support for a NATO security force on the ground ahead of a presidential election in October. The six harriers will be deployed at Kandahar for nine months, representing the first British combat aircraft in Afghanistan during the campaign that began in 2001. The harriers will supply close air support and reconnaissance capability for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which will help with security at the October 9 presidential election.
On August 28, 2004, we were told that US and Afghan soldiers have captured 22 suspected members of the ousted Taliban government regime after a clash in the southern Afghan province of Zabul. US-led coalition and Afghan soldiers are conducting a major operation in the region to improve security for civilians.
An explosion at a religious elementary school in the southeastern Paktika province, killed 10 people, including four children, on August 28, 2004 while another in the Afghan capital Kabul Sunday August 29, killed at least 7 more people. The Taliban militia claimed responsibility for one attack. Two Americans, three Nepalese, and two Afghans, including a child, were killed by a remote controlled bomb in front of the offices of international security company DynCorp in Kabul. The blast, in the upscale Shar-i-Naw section, home to dozens of aid agencies, destroyed at least eight vehicles. DynCorp provides bodyguards for Karzai and is helping to train Afghanistan's police force. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said a Taliban fighter detonated the bomb.
On August 29, 2004, US and Afghan soldiers conducting a large sweep arrested 22 suspected Taliban after a battle in a mountain region of Zabul province. No Afghan or American soldiers were injured in the fighting, which broke out Friday August 28 and was continuing on Saturday.
50 Georgian soldiers and officers from the 16th Mountain Battalion departed on August 29, 2004, to Germany for two-week training courses to prepare for a 100-day deployment in Afghanistan. Georgian soldiers will be deployed in Afghanistan under the command of the German forces.
On August 30, 2004, American officials warned all US citizens to avoid high-profile locations and government facilities in the Afghan capital after the August 29 car bombing that killed at least six people, including three Americans outside the office of an US security firm. The Taliban militia, the armed Islamic extremist group that claimed responsibility for the attack, vowed to step up violence in Kabul and other cities where US military forces and civilian projects are operating.
On August 31, 2004, eight Afghan villagers were killed and an Afghan aid worker injured when planes of the US-led coalition bombed a northeastern village, Waradesh in Pech district in Kunar province, after a battle with militants. The bombardment was requested after fighting broke out between Afghan government forces and militants. The US military in a statement confirmed there was an air strike in Kunar on August 30.
An Afghan man died and five people were hurt in a bomb attack on a UN vehicle in Afghanistan on September 3, 2004. It is the second deadly blast in a week as the country prepares for next month's polls. The remote-controlled bomb detonated in the southern city of Kandahar, the former Taliban headquarters; the target appeared to be the passing United Nations vehicle that narrowly escaped the explosion.
Three American citizens and at least six others were killed in a blast at a US security firm in the capital Kabul on September 5, 2004, a day after 10 people, mostly children, died in a bomb attack in the southern province of Paktia.
On September 6, 2004, after intense pressure from its military commanders and civilian leaders, the NATO alliance will increase its presence in Afghanistan to nearly 10,000 troops - just in time for the October 9 presidential election.
On September 5, 2004, US forces raided a suspected Taliban hideout in Dewalak, southern Afghanistan, killing two fighters and capturing at least one.
On September 7, 2004, Afghan security forces clashed with dozens of Taliban militiamen who raided a government office in southern Naubahar, leaving one soldier and four Taliban terrorists dead. About 60 Taliban stormed the chief administrator's office but the Afghan and US troops suffered no casualties. A US helicopter carrying coalition soldiers was damaged in a "hard landing" in southern Afghanistan. No one was hurt when the Blackhawk chopper came down on Monday September 6 near Deh Rawood. Taliban spokesman Mulla Hakim Latifi claimed the Taliban shot the helicopter down with a rocket, leaving 18 coalition soldiers dead. But the US confirmed it was a "non-hostile incident." Hundreds of Afghans stoned and burned the offices of at least two foreign aid agencies on Tuesday September 7 after rumours spread that the Agha Khan Development Network was trying to convert Sunni Muslims to the Ismaili sect and that women staff had been assaulted. Up to 10 local and foreign staff of the Agha Khan Development Network and British aid agency Medair were beaten or hit by stones in Faizabad, capital of Badakhshan Province. None of the injuries were serious.
Three members of a British aid organization were injured Tuesday September 7, 2004, when a demonstration at a new German army base in Fayzabad, the capital of the northern Badakshan province, turned violent. Security had now been stepped up at the base that houses an all-German Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) under the umbrella of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). PRT doctors in Fayzabad treated the injured, among them two foreigners. No German soldiers had been hurt in the incident. The reasons for the protests were initially unclear. The German troops were supporting Afghan police in their investigations. The German deployment in Fayzabad had only begun on Wednesday of last week, when an advance unit of 30 soldiers arrived in the town. Another 65 more troops should join the unit in the coming weeks. Germany runs another PRT with 270 peacekeeping troops in Kunduz.
About 100 Czech special forces deployed in Afghanistan have completed their six-month mission and will return later this month, Czech Defense Ministry spokesman Andrej Cirtek said Wednesday September 8, 2004. The soldiers, whose mission ended on August 31, will leave Afghanistan between September 15 and 20 and be back home by September 21. No mention was made of any Czech replacement troops being deployed in Afghanistan. Cirtek said all troops are safe and well.
Two suspected Taliban fighters were killed and an American soldier injured in two separate engagements in Zabul province, south Afghanistan on September 9 and 10, 2004. Suspected Taliban insurgents attacked with rocket-propelled grenade, small arms fire and machine guns. Zabul, Uruzgan and the adjoining provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the former stronghold of Taliban, have been the scene of increasing security incidents in the last nine months during which over 300 civilians, rebels, Afghan and US troops have been killed.
On Saturday September 11, 2004, two people were killed in clashes between US and Afghan forces and stone-throwing protesters angered by President Hamid Karzai axing a regional governor. A statement from his office said Ismail Khan, powerful governor of the western city of Herat and long a thorn in Karzai's side, had been "promoted" to minister of mines and industry and a replacement named. Khan turned down the post. A crowd gathered outside Khan's residence shouting "Death to America" and "Death to Karzai". Later shots were fired after a convoy of US and Afghan forces was pelted with stones.
US helicopter gunships killed up to 21 Taliban guerrillas trying to flee a joint US-Afghan assault in the southern province of Kandahar on September 12, 2004. A local Taliban commander said however that the guerrillas suffered only 10 dead in the attack in the Maruf district of Kandahar while a spokeswoman for the US military said that more than 15 guerrillas were killed in the attack involving US Apache helicopters early on Saturday.
US troops and helicopter gunships killed 22 militants, including three Arab fighters in southern Afghanistan Monday September 13, 2004. The 12-hour battle in the southern province of Zabul, a hot bed of resistance to Karzai's US-backed government, began late Sunday. Some 40 militants attacked coalition soldiers on a search operation. The troops called in two Apache helicopters, which opened fire on the fighters.
On September 15, 2004, the US is planning to send hundreds of new troops to Afghanistan to increase security before and during the October 9 election as guerrillas have increased their attacks and vowed to disrupt the presidential election. Twelve election workers are among more than 900 people killed in Afghan political violence this year.
About 700 members of the 82nd Airborne Division will head to Afghanistan, we were told on Wednesday September 15, 2004. The 700 will be on the ground in advance of the October 9 national elections, and will stay in Afghanistan for some 30 to 45 days at the most. The aim of the deployment of a unit such as this one is to patrol populated areas and provide "visible, static security". The troops are not expected to participate in any offensive operations.
A mine exploded under a vehicle carrying U.S. troops on patrol in southern Afghanistan, injuring three soldiers Friday Semptember 15, 2004. The blast occurred near Deh Rawood, a town in the southern Uruzgan province about 400 kilometers southwest of the capital, Kabul.The injured soldiers were moved to a U.S. military base in Deh Rawood. Their injuries were not life-threatening. The mine was detonated by remote control and the explosion disabled their Humvee vehicle, he said. Taliban militia were blamed for the attack.
On 16 September 2004, Georgian lawmakers have authorized the government to contribute 50 U.S.-trained mountain troops to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The Georgian soldiers will leave within days for a three-month mission to Afghanistan.
Assailants fired a rocket at an American helicopter taking President Hamid Karzai on a rare journey into Afghanistan's troubled provinces Thursday, September 17, 2004.The rocket missed the helicopter and Karzai escaped unhurt. Karzai has survived at least one previous attempt on his life. The helicopter did not touch down and returned the president to Kabul.
Militant groups may try to launch a "Tet style offensive" in some Afghan cities including Kabul in the next few weeks, the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said on Friday September 17, 2004. But he was confidant Afghan, US and NATO forces could cope with attempts to derail the first direct elections. Karzai faces 17 opponents in the presidential election. Karzai's leading rivals have called for a delay in the elections of at least a month, saying security worries meant they were unable to campaign properly. But Khalilzad said he expected the elections to go ahead as planned. He added that Afghanistan's direction for the next five years will be set by this election and the former Taliban, al Qaida rulers want to undermine it.
On September 19, 2004, Britain and the US said that they will increase their troops in Afghanistan during the presidential election next month as well as during the parliamentary election foreseen for early next year. Both elections could see a confrontation with the country's powerful warlords.
Two American soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan on September 20, 2004. The soldiers died in an exchange of gunfire in the southeastern province of Paktika along the Pakistan border. Two other American soldiers and six Afghan soldiers were injured and sent to the Salerno military base in neighbouring Khost province.
On September 22, 2004, the British government is keeping its jet fighters for nine more months in Afghanistan. Britain currently has 800 troops working under NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) flag in different parts of Afghanistan including capital Kabul.
The German government decided on Wednesday September 22, 2004, to ask the parliament to extend its peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan by another 12 months. German Defense Minister Peter Struck said forces in Afghanistan should be strengthened for the upcoming presidential elections. There are 1,550 German troops in the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, 270 Provincial Reconstruction Team troops in Kundus and 300 in the neighboring country Uzbekistan. The total of 2,120 German troops are short of the parliamentary mandate for up to 2,250. On Friday, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to renew the mandate of the multinational security force in Afghanistan for another year until October 2005.
The Bundestag, or lower chamber ofthe Germany's parliament, Thursday September 30, 2004, extended for one more year the mandate of German soldiers serving in Afghanistan's International Security Assistance Force(ISAF). ISAF was authorized in 2001 by the UN Security Council after the overthrow of the Taliban regime. Germany has contributed more than 2,000 soldiers to ISAF, making up for a third of the multi-national force.
German Defense Minister Peter Struck pledged on Thursday September 23, 2004, to continue Germany's peacekeeping commitment in Afghanistan. Even if other NATO members decide to retreat from the mission, German forces will stay there.
An attack on a patrol killed an American soldier on September 23, 2004, the third US fatality this week in Afghanistan; more than a dozen Americans were wounded.
Six RAF Harrier GR7 aircrafts from RAF Cottesmore in Rutland along with 315 troops set off for Kandahar early on Friday September 24, 2004. They will give air and ground support to the Nato-led international effort. The single seated aircraft will replace six US AV8B jets as part of a routine rotation of forces.
Suspected Taliban fighters have launched attacks on security posts in southern Afghanistan killing nine soldiers on September 25, 2004. The attacks came the same day as the head of US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan warned that the Taliban were stepping up plans to disrupt the presidential elections. Three soldiers were killed in one attack, six in a second one.
On September 25, 2004, we were told that Germany's army intends to build a temporary military camp in Surobi, 60 kilometres south of Kabul to boost security at the start of the next year. The military facility is scheduled to be up and running by January next year. The Bundeswehr has camps in Kabul, Faizabad and Kunduz. With its 1,480 soldiers, Germany provides the largest national troop contingent within the NATO-run International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The 400 troops stationed outside Kabul are responsible for managing provincial reconstruction teams charged with improving security, fostering reconstruction work, and boosting the influence of the central government.
Taliban militants crept up to an Afghan government office under cover of darkness early Wednesday September 29, 2004, and launched a gun battle that left four attackers and three Afghan troops dead. Elsewhere, an explosion killed a motorcyclist in what an Afghan commander suggested was a botched suicide attack, and US troops battled with insurgents near the Pakistani border. The mayor's office in Khaki Afghan, a district of southeastern Zabul province, was targeted Wednesday by rebels armed with machine guns and rifles.
On September 29, 2004 we were told that the government of Afghanistan has asked the Pentagon to build five base camps for the Afghan National Army, a project that could cost as much as $1 billion. The agency notified Congress on Tuesday of the possible foreign construction project, which would be carried out by the US Army Corps of Engineers and would involve between 15 and 100 US government employees and contractors. "The government of Afghanistan needs these services to support the recruitment, training, and operational effectiveness of a military capability to establish security and stability throughout Afghanistan, and to promote the stability and development of a friendly, democratic central government". The project would include facilities and infrastructure for the Afghan National Army's Central Corps in Kabul. Simultaneously, four regional commands would be built in Gardez, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif.
Four foreign peacekeepers were wounded, one seriously, in Afghanistan late on Wednesday September 29, 2004, after a rocket attack on a base in the northern city of Kunduz where German soldiers are deployed. The troops were part of a civilian-military Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), which have been deployed across the country to improve security and protect reconstruction projects. The German defence ministry said two German soldiers and a Swiss soldier serving with them were wounded in the attack on their base. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan since August last year in attacks blamed on remnants of the ousted Taliban militia and its allies, including al Qaida. In addition to around 8,000 NATO-led peacekeepers based mainly in Kabul, there are more than 18,000 soldiers in a US-led force hunting remnants of the Taliban and al Qaida. Kunduz has generally been seen as a safe area in Afghanistan, but in June, 11 Chinese construction workers were killed in an attack on their camp near the city.
Guerrillas from the ousted Taliban regime killed at least 12 soldiers on Thursday September 30, 2004. At least seven more soldiers were killed in other clashes in the southern province of Zabul on Tuesday and Wednesday. Some Taliban members were also killed, but no details were available. On Wednesday, guerrillas attacked a joint convoy of US and Afghan forces. The Taliban said several US soldiers were killed, but there has been no independent verification. Taliban spokesman Hamid Agha said that the militia was behind Wednesday's rocket attack on a German peacekeeping base in the northern city of Kunduz which wounded four foreign soldiers, one seriously.
US-led troops captured 15 Taliban militants on September 29, 2004, when they were trapped on the border with Pakistan after attacking a coalition patrol. Pakistani troops prevented the insurgents from crossing the border near insurgency-hit Shkin district as coalition forces were pursuing them after a brief gun battle.
On September 30, 2004, ten days before the presidential elections, the US Congress has blasted European nations for not sending enough troops to bolster security in the volatile country. The US Congress slammed European nations for not fulfilling promises to reinforce NATO-led troops in the country to beef up security.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reinforced its security forces in Afghanistan Friday October 1, 2004, as part of international efforts to safeguard the presidential election. The last of over two thousand extra troops have arrived to bring the total strength of the NATO-led force to 9,000. Spain and Italy have both added extra battalions in recent weeks, while the Netherlands has provided six F-16jets and Britain six Harrier aircrafts. A further US battalion is on standby at its base in Germany. NATO took command of the three-year-old ISAF in 2003, its first mission beyond the European and North American borders it was set up to defend in 1949.
Afghan intelligence agents backed by international peacekeepers arrested 25 people allegedly linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida in an early morning raid in eastern Kabul Saturday October 2, 2004. Nobody was injured in the operation.
Two members of the Irish Red Cross are on their way to Afghanistan on October 2, 2004, to help with one of the world's largest, but mostly forgotten, humanitarian emergencies. They will be help providing clean drinking water to thousands of Afghans by restoring supply networks damaged during decades of conflict and co-ordinating aid flights from across the border in Pakistan.
The killing in Afghanistan continues, undermining US claims of success in pacifying the country. The deaths of three Afghan soldiers and two militants over the weekend brought to at least 957 the number of people reported killed in political violence in 2004. The toll includes about 30 American soldiers. But the tally of dead in Afghanistan -a haven of tranquillity compared with Iraq- is an indicator of the task facing both the US military and whomever becomes Afghanistan's first directly elected president -most likely the American-backed incumbent, Hamid Karzai- to consolidate a shaky peace.
On Saturday October 2, 2004, Afghan forces have arrested 85 people allegedly linked to the Taliban who may have been planning to disrupt next weekend's presidential vote. Sixty of the arrests were made in southern Afghanistan, where the guerrillas were intercepted Friday as they tried to slip into the country from Pakistan.
US troops clashed with militants in southern Afghanistan on October 4, 2004, killing at least two fighters. A rocket attack on the main American base in the country wounded a US soldier. The shootout started when two men on a motorcycle refused to stop when US troops confronted them near Poshakan village in the southern province of Uruzgan province, a hotspot for US troops battling Taliban militants. The two men were killed in the fight; one of the dead is believed to be a local Taliban commander, Mullah Dur Mohammad.
Seven Afghan policemen were killed on Tuesday October 5, 2004, when their vehicle was blown up by a remote-controlled mine in southern Afghanistan. The policemen were travelling in a four-wheel drive vehicle in the Maruf district of Kandahar province, which has been hit hard by an insurgency headed by remnants of the ousted Taliban regime.
A bomb exploded in the northeast Afghan city of Feyzabad, targeting interim President Hamid Karzai's running mate, on October 6, 2004. Two people were killed in the explosion. However, Mr Karzai's vice-presidential candidate, Ahmed Zia Masood, was not injured. The incident came as Mr Karzai held his final rally. Mr Karzai received a late boost on Wednesday as two candidates said they would now support him.
A rocket hit the Afghan capital of Kabul near the US Embassy and other diplomatic missions on Saturday October 8, 2004, a day before the elections. All staffs at the embassy were ordered to briefly take cover in an underground bunker. The rocket hit a car park near a media accreditation centre for the elections, causing no damage or casualties.
Three Pakistani nationals were arrested in southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan Friday October 8, 2004. Their tanker, full of explosive material, was stopped at one of Kandahar's gates. Another car was also impounded wand its two occupants arrested in the Taliban's former stronghold of Kandahar Saturday morning.
A fuel truck caught fire soon after voting opened in a northern Afghan city on Saturday October 9, 2004, bringing tension in the nation holding its first presidential election but it was not a bomb, just a fire. There were no casualties.
A senior Taliban leader, Dr. Abdul Qadir, son of Amanullah, who was in charge of conducting suicide activities in Kandahar, was killed in south Afghanistan Sunday October 10, 2004. In another incident, "a coalition soldier was injured in a Taliban attack in Uruzgan province. During the first direct presidential election in the country, the Afghan National Army and Afghan police have foiled a total of 37 assaulting attempts of Taliban insurgents, among which 18 rocket attacks and 19 explosive devices which did not cause significant casualties.
At least 24 suspected Taliban militants were killed on Saturday October 9, 2004, in a bombing raid by aircraft from the US-led coalition in the central province of Uruzgan. Taliban guerrillas who have vowed to disrupt the poll attacked a convoy of Afghan and US-led troops in Char Cheno district, several hours before polling began in Afghanistan's elections; air support was called in. Locals in the area said 14 civilians were either wounded or killed in the skirmish, among them women and children. Despite warnings of violence by the Taliban there have been fewer attacks than feared.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will ask the other 25 NATO countries Wednesday October 13, 2004, to expand the alliance's role in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, Rumsfeld wants NATO to broaden its efforts throughout the country and gradually integrate its forces with US troops' activities. In Iraq, Rumsfeld wants NATO to speed up dispatching officers to train senior Iraqi military officers. The alliance's defence ministers also will consider a request from Iraq for critically needed military equipment.
On October 13, 2004, the US asked NATO to take the leading military role in Afghanistan; this does not mean that American troops seeking to destroy the Taliban and hunt down Osama bin Laden will be withdrawn. The United States has urged NATO countries to assume a bigger role and to come up with plans to take over all military operations there, possibly as early as next year. Defence ministers from the 26-member alliance are meeting in Romania to discuss the proposal.
Despite criticisms of the plan by Germany and France NATO defence ministers discussed a US-backed proposal on Wednesday October 13, 2004, to merge Afghan peacekeeping and anti-terrorism operations under a joint command. Though no decision was announced, officials said most members of NATO would accept combining the 20,000 peacekeepers and the 9,000 US combat troops under a NATO flag.
On Thursday October 14, 2004, 10 anti-aircraft SAM type missiles were found in eastern parts of Afghanistan. This is the first time that SAM missiles have been discovered in Afghanistan.
A remote-controlled mine detonated under an American military vehicle on patrol in southern Afghanistan on October 15, 2004, injuring one soldier. In response, a US helicopter killed the suspected attacker as he fled on a motorbike.
On October 15, 2004, we were told that a French air detachment composed of three planes and a supply aircraft is to start an intelligence mission in Afghanistan next week. This detachment will remain three weeks in Douchanbe, rear base of the French army for its operation in Afghanistan. The aircraft will take photos to inform the French soldiers and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on the positions taken by the insurgents before they conceal for winter when air intelligence is almost impossible due to climate conditions.
Six people, including three children and two US soldiers, have been killed in on October 15, 2004. The children and a policeman died in a bomb explosion on Friday in southeastern Afghanistan. Two US soldiers were killed and three wounded by a bomb. The absence of significant attacks by Taliban fighters and their Islamic militant allies in the weeks before the vote was seen as a success for US, Afghan and NATO-led forces.
Five people including a member of the staff of the joint UN-Afghan election commission were killed after their vehicle hit a mine in the troubled southeast Paktika province Monday October 18, 2004. Authorities declined to disclose the identity of the victim and to declare if it was an attack or an accident. It was the first casualty in the post-election Afghanistan while the organisation had lost 12 of its staff, including three women, since the beginning of the election process in last December.
On October 19, 2004, militants fired half a dozen rockets over US-led military outposts in southeastern Afghanistan. Four rockets were fired onto the US-led military base in the eastern city of Jalalabad but the attack did not cause any casualties. Another two rockets landed in the perimeters of another coalition base in neighbouring Kunar province on the border with Pakistan, also without causing casualties. An explosion destroyed a vehicle in the southern province of Paktia, killing five people. An electoral worker (a doctor), a driver, and three others died in the blast.
On October 20, 2004, four Pakistani soldiers were killed and seven injured, including an officer, in a battle between the Army and the Mujahideen in Teasel Sarogha at Spinkai Raghzai in South Waziristan. Two civilians and five Mujahideen were also killed. The battle took place while Pakistani military forces were conducting a search operation in an effort to locate Abdullah Mehsood who is said to head up the group that has taken the Chinese engineers captive.
A Pakistani military spokesman said that 246 "terrorists" have
been killed and 579 have been arrested up to October 20, 2004; 171 Pakistani
soldiers have also been killed. The military spokesman also said that the
Mehsood tribal area had been surrounded in an effort to apprehend Abdullah
Mehsood who "is working on establishing of foreign political agenda."
In Ozgan province, at Waprode, on October 20, 2004, a US vehicle was hit
by a mine blast. Two US soldiers were killed and five others wounded. Taliban
Mujahideen fired rockets at US-led military outposts in the southeast early
Wednesday. Nineteen people have been killed in attacks since Afghanistan's
Election Day, including two US soldiers and three children. The Afghan Ministry
of Defence claims that they have arrested a senior Taliban leader, but so
far they have not disclosed his name.
On October 20, 2004, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has agreed on leadership rote of its peacekeeping force in Afghanistan up to 2007 to try to improve planning for the mission. So far, Turkey, Italy, Britain and Spain have agreed to lead the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for six to eight months each when the multinational Eurocorps hands over the reins next February. Meanwhile, a similar rotation plan had also been agreed to run Kabul International Airport; the first three nations to take on the task are Turkey, Romania and the Czech Republic.
A roadside bomb explosion in southern Afghanistan on Thursday October 21, 2004 wounded three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter. Two Humvees in which they were travelling in the Neka district of Paktika province were destroyed. One of the soldiers was said to be in critical condition, while another was seriously wounded. The condition of a third soldier and the interpreter was reported to be stable.
A US helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan Wednesday October 20, 2004, leaving one US soldier dead and two others injured. The HH-60 helicopter crashed on a medical evacuation mission transporting injured local Afghans. The accident was not the result of hostile action and is under investigation.
On October 23, 2004, a suicide bomber killed himself and a 12 year-old girl in Kabul, Afghanistan. Three soldiers, two children and a foreigner were also wounded.
On October 26, 2004, at least 9 Pakistani tribesmen were killed and 5 wounded in a rocked attack by militants believed to be linked to al-Qaida. The attack occurred in the tribal region near the border with Afghanistan. The victims are part of a tribal militia hunting militants.
On October 28, 2004, three UN election workers were taken hostage in Kabul.
On October 31, 2004, the three UN election workers appeared on al-Jazeera
television. The kidnappers threaten to kill them in 72 hours unless the
UN and all foreign troops leave Afghanistan and all Taliban and al-Qaida
prisoners are set free from US military jails. The hostages are:
- Annetta Flanigan of Northern Ireland.
- Shqipe Habiti of Kosovo.
- Angelito Nayan of Philippine.
On November 7, 2004, the Taliban who kidnapped three UN workers said that they would be set free in exchange for the release of 26 prisoners, some of whom could be in Guantanamo Bay. On November 22, 2004, the three UN Workers were released unharmed. On November 23, 2004, the Afghan government denied that the hostages held by the Taliban had been freed after a deal was reached with their captors, that is the liberation of up to 24 Taliban prisoners.
On November 24, 2004, a bomb killed two US soldiers and wounded a third one in the town of Deh Rawood, southern Afghanistan. In total 110 US soldiers died since the start of the invasion in late 2001.
On Sunday November 28, 2004, a group of suspected Taliban attacked the offices of an aid agency (Voluntary Association for the Rehabilitation of Afghanistan) in Dilaram, southwestern Afghanistan killing three Afghan workers and wounding up to four security guards.
On December 7, 2004, suspected Taliban rebels attacked an Afghan military base in Khost province. In the battle four Afghan soldiers were killed as well as five militants.
On December 12, 2004, we were told that the 18,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan have started a winter offensive -Lighting Freedom- against the remaining Taliban rebels. They hope to persuade the Taliban to take up an offer of amnesty by the US military authorities and the Afghan government. It also aimed to improve security before the parliamentary elections foreseen for the spring of 2005 and to reduce the poppy production.
On December 15, 2004, we were told that two senior Taliban commanders, Mullah Naqvi and Mullah Qayum, have been arrested in Afghanistan. They both were on the list of most wanted men in Afghanistan for their participation in the present terror attacks.
An US soldier and a former Afghan militia leader were killed on Sunday January 2, 2005, when US troops clashed with gunmen in western Afghanistan.
A land mine exploded near a truck carrying Afghan soldiers near the Pakistani border on January 29, 2005. Nine Afghan soldiers were killed and one wounded.
On February 1, 2005, Pakistan strongly rejected claims by a top American military official that its forces helped US troops in Afghanistan direct artillery fire at suspects on the Pakistani side of the border. It is true that Pakistani troops were cooperating with US forces based in the other side of the border but "it is a cooperation in terms of intelligence sharing." "It was never in terms of inviting "coalition) fire" onto Pakistan. Pakistan carries out its own raids against rebels near the border and has killed about 500 al-Qaida-linked rebels in a series of operations in South Waziristan tribal area since last October, damaging al-Qaida hideouts and training camps.
On February 5, 2005, Afghan officials believe all 104 people aboard an airliner died when it crashed in a mountainside near the capital, Kabul, during a snowstorm. The wreckage of the plane, which vanished from radar screens Thursday February 3 as it approached Kabul airport, was found today east of the capital. Authorities said that there was no indication of any foul play. On February 6, 2005, it was confirmed that all 104 passengers on board the Boeing 737 aircraft that crashed near Kabul earlier this week, were effectively dead. The plane was flying from the western city of Herat to Kabul. Six Americans were on the flight, three of them foreign aid workers employed by the Boston-based aid agency, "Management Sciences for Health."
Coalition forces recovered four weapons caches February 5, 2005. One cache, located in Ghazni province, contained 421 82 mm mortar rounds, one 100 mm projectile, two 122 mm projectiles, eight 57 mm projectiles, one 76 mm projectile, 14 23 mm recoilless rifle rounds, two C-50 rockets, 10 anti-personnel mines, 500 fuses, 21 hand grenades and 12 VOC-25 rifle rounds. The second weapon cache, located in Parwan province, contained 75 AK-47 assault rifles and large amounts of machine-gun, anti-aircraft and mortar rounds. In addition, coalition troops discovered and secured another two weapons caches in Nangahar province. They contained five SAGGER anti-tank guided missiles, 139 B-10 rockets, 17 SPG-9 rounds with one booster and nine cans of 12.7 mm machine-gun rounds.
On February 11, 2005, NATO began extending its operations by sending peacekeepers to Herat and three other cities in the west. NATO is hoping to police all of Afghanistan by 2006. The new troops will come from Spain, Italy and Lithuania. NATO presently has a force of about 8,500 troops in Afghanistan. Until now NATO's International Security Assistance Force has come from more than 30 countries but has been deployed only in Kabul and in the northern regions.
A new Macedonian peacekeeping contingent left for Afghanistan on Friday February 11, 2005 on a six-month mission. The contingent of 19 Army soldiers will be under the command of the German forces in Afghanistan within the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It is the sixth army unit sent by the Macedonian government to Afghanistan on peacekeeping missions. A previous unit with the same number of troops was sent in August last year.
On February 11, 2005, we were told that Turkey will take over the command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan from EUROCORPS. First Army Commander General Hursit Tolon and other military officials departed for Kabul to take part in the ceremony. Turkish Forces will command the 1,600 personnel of ISAF until August 11.
Anti government militants fired several rockets at a US military outpost and an Afghan army unit in southeastern Afghanistan, but there were no casualties, officials said Saturday February 12, 2005. Three rockets landed near a US-led military base in Khost province while three more were fired at the Afghan troops in the same region.
Canada will increase - nearly double- the number of its troops in Afghanistan to about 1,100 by this summer, Defence Minister Bill Graham said on Sunday February 13, 2005. Canada currently has 600 troops serving in the Afghan capital of Kabul with NATO's International Security Assistance Force. It also plans to put a provincial reconstruction team, or PRT, in the southern city of Kandahar by August at the latest.
Afghan security forces have captured a commander of the Taliban guerrillas in the southern afghan province of Uruzgan on Friday February 11, 2005, and handed him over to the US-led coalition forces. Mulla Mohammed Naeem was caught in Sia Sang village in Deh Rawood district, some 400 kilometres south of Kabul. He was reportedly leading local militants to fight the US-led forces in the country.
The Jalalabad region of Afghanistan has become the country's second region -after the region of Mazar-i-Sharif- to be disarmed we were told on February 11, 2005. More than 39,000 Afghan military personnel have been disarmed until now. Although Jalalabad has been declared disarmed about 300 personnel remain on duty to guard military equipment.
Norway is planning to send another unit of Special Forces to Afghanistan (February 14, 2005). This unit comes in addition to the battalion already serving with the international stabilizing force ISAF. Norway's engagement will also continue outside Kabul, particularly in the northern part of the country. However, the new unit will not serve with ISAF, but under direct US command.
The Czech Republic will send 40 troops to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) (Thursday February 17, 2005.) The troops should leave for Afghanistan in mid-March; they will be deployed in the northeast of the country. The Czech Republic already has 15 specialists operating within ISAF in Kabul.
In what is seen as the first sign of Pakistan's assertion against US policies in its area, Islamabad, on February 22, 2005, has ordered its army to shoot at US troops if they intrude into the country from Afghanistan without authorisation.
Two Afghan relief workers were found shot dead on February 22, 2004, on a remote southern desert roadside in the Sangin district of the Helmand province, a former Taliban stronghold and now a centre of Afghanistan's booming narcotics industry. Gunmen stopped the sport utility vehicle carrying the two men who worked for Ibn Sina, an Afghan relief group. Health Minister Mohammed Amin Fatemi said robbers or militants could be responsible for the killing. Mullah Hakim Latifi, a spokesman for the Taliban who has claimed responsibility for past attacks on aid workers, said that he knew nothing about this latest assault.
On February 23, 2005, NATO newcomer Bulgaria decided to send up to 30 more military policemen to Afghanistan to help increase security at Kabul airport. The Balkan state has already deployed 65 troops in the 9,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operating in Kabul and northern Afghanistan. The EU aspirant country will take over full control of security at Kabul airport for four months next year; it plans to send up to 350 extra soldiers to do the job.
The Dutch government plans to send 250 troops, mostly commandos, to Afghanistan to hunt the al Qaida and Taliban fighters, the foreign ministry said on Friday February 25, 2005. The new mission will last one year and will have the support of four Chinook transport helicopters, 165 Special Forces and 85 helicopter staff. They would also help combat drug trafficking. Six Dutch Apache helicopters, along with 100 troops and another 139 military personnel are already stationed in Afghanistan to help provide security. They are integrated in the NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
Nine policemen and 10 Taliban members were killed in southern Afghanistan
in two separate ambushes on Thursday February 24, 2005. The police patrol
was ambushed by suspected Taliban militants in Chakul, one of the most violence-prone
areas in southeastern Helmand province. Also on Thursday, in southern Kandahar
province, a US soldier and a militant were injured when US-led forces investigating
a bomb were fired at from a moving vehicle.
At least three Afghan policemen were wounded as their vehicle run over a
landmine in the Helmand province Monday February 28, 2005. In a similar
attack, suspected Taliban militia in Helmand province last Friday killed
nine paratroopers. The leader of the hardliner fundamentalist movement Mullah
Mohammad Omar said that the movement would step up anti-government activities
when the winter ends.
On Wednesday March 2, 2005, NATO began a long-awaited expansion of its peacekeeping forces into western Afghanistan as part of the efforts to control and rebuild the remote region. An initial deployment of Italian troops arrived in the main western city of Herat, where soldiers from Spain, Greece and Lithuania will later join them.
Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer signed an agreement in Brussels on March 2, 2005, allowing NATO military transit through Georgia. Tbilisi will permit NATO to transport soldiers and military hardware to Afghanistan not only through its airspace, but also by sea and land.
A gun battle between US-led coalition forces and militants in eastern Afghanistan left three militants and two civilians dead, the US military said Saturday March 5, 2005. Wednesday, militants fired on the coalition forces; two coalition soldiers and three civilians were wounded. More than three years after the fall of the Taliban regime following the US-led invasion, about 17,000 US forces are still hunting al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Four policemen and two guerrillas were wounded early on Saturday March 5, 2005, when Taliban fighters attacked a district headquarters in Afghanistan's eastern province of Kunar. In another incident overnight, insurgents fired five rockets at a district capital in the southern province of Helmand, one of which landed on a school, but there were no casualties. One wounded guerrilla was captured after the attack in the province's Sarkani district and the other Taliban fighters fled towards the Pakistani border. More than 1,000 people have died in Taliban-linked violence in Afghanistan in the past 18 months, including guerrillas, civilians, aid workers, officials, and foreign and Afghan troops.
Pakistani soldiers killed two foreign al-Qaida suspects and arrested 11 people on Saturday March 5, 2005 in a remote northern village bordering Afghanistan. The militants were hiding in Devgar village in North Waziristan, roughly 300 km southwest of the capital, Islamabad. It was not immediately known whether any al-Qaida leaders were among the dead or the arrested men.
Troops of the Afghan National Army (ANA) have arrested four senior Taliban leaders, including Mullah Abidullah Akhund, a prominent commander, in the southern Uruzgan province on Sunday March 6, 2005. The name of the detainee Mullah Abidullah Akhund is the same as the fugitive former Taliban Defence Minister who is still at large. More than 20 people including at least one American soldier were killed in Taliban-related violence in the south, southeast and east Afghanistan during the past two weeks.
Attacks on US-led forces in Afghanistan have fallen by at least half in the past year, a US general who commands military operations across the country said in Kabul on March 7, 2005. A year ago, there were between 10 and 15 attacks a week against coalition forces, now there are no more than five. However, the US-led coalition lost 20 to 25 soldiers in the past year. About 117 American troops have died in Afghanistan since late 2001, with slightly more than half killed in action. Some 18,000 US soldiers and about 8,000 from allied countries are in Afghanistan since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban regime. The soldiers are training the new Afghan army and tracking down the remnants of the Taliban, which harboured the planners of the September 11 attacks on the US
Gunmen shot and killed a Briton in a nighttime attack, the first fatal shooting of a foreign development worker in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban three years ago. The hard-line Islamic militia claimed responsibility. Steven Blair MacQueen, 41, a Scot, who worked as an adviser to Afghanistan's rural development ministry, was killed as he drove a pickup truck through downtown late Monday, just days before he was to leave the country. The attack occurred in front of the main guesthouse for U.N. workers and the Dutch Embassy.
As the Dutch military mission to Iraq came to an end with the formal transfer to the British military of the Dutch base in southern Iraq that took place on March 7, 2005, the Dutch ministry of defence is already planning the next mission -this time to Afghanistan- leaving parliament with a sense that it has been completely sidelined regarding this particular plan. The Dutch government now wants to send 150 commandos to Afghanistan to assist US forces in tracking down leading figures from the al-Qaida network, including its leader Osama bin Laden. It will be the first active involvement in 'aggressive' military operations by the Dutch troops, who have only taken part previously in international peacekeeping operations.
On Friday March 11, 2005, Pakistan's army warned tribesmen in the country's western border regions to give up protecting "terrorists", or face military action. Hundreds of al Qaida linked militants are believed to be hiding in Pakistan's rugged mountainous region bordering Afghanistan where they enjoy support among the local conservative Pashtun tribesmen. Pakistani security forces have killed many militants in the tribal region of South Waziristan last year, but so far the security forces have found no sign of al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, or of his deputy Ayman al Zawahri who, some experts said, are somewhere in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. Pakistan has arrested more than 600 al-Qaida and Taliban and handed them over to the US authorities since joining the war on terror declared by Washington after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The US military in Afghanistan said on March 14, 2005, that suspected Taliban fighters north of Jalalabad wounded two Marines in an ambush. The Marines came under fire while conducting a routine security patrol, and the assailants retreated. Both Marines received shrapnel wounds to the shoulder and were treated at the scene before continuing with their mission.
A land mine left from Afghanistan's previous wars killed a US soldier near an American base in Shindand, close to the Iranian border, in western Afghanistan on March 16, 2005. However the top US general insisted security in the war-ravaged country was "exceptionally good."
A bomb attack killed five people and wounded 32 in the southern city of Kandahar on March 19, 2005. Police blamed Taliban-led rebels, but a spokesman for the group denied responsibility for the attack.
The Dutch government will send four F-16 fighter jets and about 100 troops to Afghanistan this month to provide air support for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the defence ministry said on March 22, 2005. The jets will initially be based at Kabul International Airport to be moved later to the Bagram air base north of Kabul. The mission will last one year. Six Dutch Apache helicopters along with 100 troops and another 139 military personnel are stationed in Afghanistan as part of NATO's ISAF. Their mission ends this month. About 18,000 US-led foreign troops are in Afghanistan.
On March 24, 2005, seven people, including a woman and two children, have been killed during a battle in southeastern Afghanistan. The US military said coalition troops came under attack when they raided a village near the Pakistani border to capture a man, a suspected Taliban militant, believed to have been implicated in many attacks on American forces in the area. The suspect, two other insurgents, an Afghan woman and two children died in the battle, as well as an Afghan helping the coalition troops. Another child and an Afghan man were wounded. In a separate incident on Wednesday, an Afghan teenager was killed during a coalition search of a village near Asadabad in eastern Afghanistan.
US-led coalition forces killed five insurgents in retaliatory artillery fire after the rebels attacked two US military bases with rockets in southeast Afghanistan Wednesday March 23, 2005. A US post near the Salerno base in the southeastern province of Khost was also targeted with eight rockets but there were no US coalition casualties.
A US military vehicle struck a mine in central Afghanistan on Saturday March 26, 2005, triggering an explosion that killed four American soldiers. It was unclear whether the mine was freshly laid, or a leftover from the country's previous wars. The soldiers were among a group of American and Afghan officials examining a potential site for a shooting range in Logar Province, south of Kabul, when one of their three vehicles hit the mine. The victims' bodies were airlifted to the main US base at Bagram. No one else was hurt.
A senior Taliban commander has surrendered to the Afghan government on Sunday March 27, 2005. The prominent Taliban commander Mullah Amanullah surrendered to government troops in the Deh Chopan district of Zabul province." Another armed Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Rahman was apprehended in the same area that day. Under the amnesty and national reconciliation policy initiated by President Hamid Karzai and US ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad late last year, a number of low grade Taliban militias returned to their homes. Taliban's chief Mullah Mohammad Omar has time and again termed the offer as a trick to split his fundamentalist movement and rejected it.
Attackers using bombs and guns ambushed US and Afghan government troops on March 30, 2005, in regions of the country rife with Taliban militants, wounding six Afghan and two American soldiers. Insurgents detonated a bomb beside a vehicle carrying Afghan troops near Asadabad, 120 miles east of Kabul, in Kunar province, and then shot at them. Four of the six wounded soldiers underwent surgery at US military hospitals. The other two wounded soldiers were listed as stable. Two American soldiers were wounded in a similar ambush near Tirin Kot, 250 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, in central Uruzgan province. Both were evacuated to a US base for treatment and were in stable condition. A roadside bomb exploded in the capital Monday, damaging a Canadian diplomatic vehicle and injuring four Afghan civilians in another car. Another Afghan soldier was wounded when a comrade stepped on a land mine in western Afghanistan on Monday. Three children were also wounded.
An Afghan court has shortened prison sentences of three Americans, Jonathan Idema, Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo jailed last year for running a private prison and torturing Afghan detainees. Nevertheless, at a closed-door session, the Afghan court upheld the three men's convictions for torture and operating a private jail.
There might be fewer Italian troops in Iraq by the end of the year. But there soon will be more in Afghanistan. Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, the Italian equivalent of the American head of the joint chiefs of staff, said Thursday March 31, 2005, that there would probably be more than 2,000 Italians in Afghanistan when the country takes its turn leading the International Security Assistance Force.
Australia rejected a NATO request on Friday April 1, 2005, to send more troops to Afghanistan, though its government agreed with the alliance chief that Afghanistan's opium production was an urgent international problem. Australia sent troops to back up US forces in the invasion of Afghanistan, but their numbers have fallen from 150 at the conflict's height to just one soldier today.
Saturday April 2, 2005, the US-led coalition forces confirmed the increasing militancy in Afghanistan, particularly in the areas along the border with Pakistan. The number and severity of attacks against Afghan and coalition forces has increased lately compared to what happened during the winter. This statement came just after a series of violent attacks conducted by suspected Taliban operatives on Afghan and US troops over the past two weeks, in which more than 10 people, including four US soldiers, were killed and a dozen injured.
A landmine killed one and injured four civilians, including three children, in Afghanistan's northern Balkh province Friday April 1, 2005. Their vehicle ran over a mine on the Balkh-Mazar-e-Sharif road. In a separate incident, a roadside bomb explosion targeting a Canadian diplomat vehicle injured four civilians. A suicide car bomb killed the driver in the eastern city of Jalalabad when American First Lady Laura Bush paid a five-hour visit to Kabul.
Suspected Taliban gunmen ambushed a convoy of civilian trucks carrying military vehicles to a US base in southern Afghanistan, on April 2, 2005. The gunmen attacked the trucks after they crossed the Pakistani border at Spin Boldak, 55 miles south of Kandahar city. Three of the drivers - two Pakistanis and one Afghan - were killed by gunfire that also severely damaged the trucks and two of the military vehicles. The fourth driver escaped and told authorities that four gunmen had appeared in the road in front of the convoy and opened fire. Taliban militants are blamed for the attack, but there is no evidence to support his claim.
Three policemen have been killed in southern Afghanistan on April 3, 2005, in two attacks blamed on Taliban fighters. Gunmen stormed government offices in Helmand province, killing at least three policemen and injuring four others.
Nine people are now confirmed dead as the result of a military helicopter crash in Afghanistan Wednesday, April 6, 2005. The CH 47 Chinook helicopter crashed approximately 80 miles southwest of Kabul as a result of a severe dust storm. There were no survivors. The number of casualties may still rise because there could have been 13 people on board. According to the rescuers "They were all wearing American uniforms and they were all dead." There were strong winds at the time of the accident and a dust storm is believed to be the cause of the crash. American and Afghan authorities continue to search the wreckage for additional bodies.
Air strikes by US helicopter gunships and tankbuster jets have killed at least 12 suspected Taliban in southern Afghanistan on April 11, 2005. The fighting began after insurgents tried to kill the former military commander of Khost province, Kheyal Baaz Khan Sherzai, in an ambush. The suspected Taliban fired rockets at Mr. Sherzai on a main road between the Afghan capital, Kabul and Gardez. He was not injured. Afghan soldiers chased the attackers into the mountains and US air support was called in.
On April 12, 2005, US troops and warplanes came to help Afghan forces ambushed by 30 to 35 militants on a high mountain pass. The following fight killed about 12 militants and wounded two American soldiers.
A bomb planted by suspected insurgents on April 17, 2005, destroyed five oil tankers outside an American military base in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. Three Pakistani truck drivers were injured in the incident. Supporters of the former Taliban authorities have said they carried out the attack.
Afghan soldiers killed eight suspected Taliban fighters during a battle in southern Afghanistan, on Tuesday April 19, 2005. At least 10 other Taliban fighters were captured during the clash in Zabul Province.
US and Afghan soldiers backed by warplanes and artillery battled suspected insurgents near Gayan, Paktika province, 100 miles south of the capital near the border with Pakistan on April 21, 2005. Four fighters and one Afghan soldier were killed. In another incident, one Afghan soldier was killed and another was injured Sunday April 24 when their vehicle hit a land mine east of Kandahar. The injured soldier was flown to the nearby US base for treatment.
An explosion hit a convoy in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar on Sunday April 24, 2005; one Romanian soldier was killed and two were wounded. The blast ripped through one of the five vehicles in the convoy on a dirt road in Arghandab district. The attack was carried out by remnants of the ousted Taliban regime using a remote-controlled bomb. In a separate incident an ancient taxi exploded in the capital Kabul minutes after its driver got out, but the blast -on a road often used by NATO peacekeepers- caused no casualties or damage.
Afghan police found and neutralized a car bomb containing almost half a tonne of explosives in Herat city, on April 25, 2005. It is one more proof that Taliban militants are increasing their attacks across the country. The bomb was made of rockets and mortar rounds, land mines, and dynamite wired together and packed into a Toyota vehicle.
Romanian armed forces chief of staff Eugen Balan said April 25, 2005, that
Romanian soldiers would temporarily suspend patrols in Afghanistan following
the killing of one soldier near Kandahar. A commission of Romanian and American
experts is looking into the incident in which one Romanian soldier was killed
and two others wounded Sunday when a mine exploded. Hundreds of Romanians
attached to the 18,000-strong US-led coalition are stationed in Kandahar,
helping US troops hunt down militants from the ousted Taliban regime. Taliban
militants claimed responsibility for the April 24 explosion.
Pakistani authorities have found four dead bodies of suspected militants
in the North Waziristan tribal Agency, a day after artillery shells were
fired from across the Afghan border area. On Saturday April 23, 2005, the
US and Afghan forces launched an operation near the border after suspected
Taliban fired rockets and missiles on a military camp in the Orgun area
of Afghanistan. Yet another report says that the four unidentified decomposed
dead bodies were found on Pak-Afghan border near Lorha Mandi village in
North Waziristan Agency on Sunday.
Seventeen members of the Hezb-e-Islami militant group have laid down their arms and surrendered to Afghan authorities in the southeast of the country, an official said Thursday April 28, 2005. However, it was unclear if these members of the militant organisation would be eligible for a government amnesty offered to the Taliban. Former Afghan Prime Minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is on the United States' most wanted list of terror suspects, leads the Hezb-e-Islami. "Seventeen commanders of Hezb-e-Islami from different districts of Paktia and Khost provinces returned from Pakistan and joined the political process," Merajudeen Patan, Khost Governor said.
Three Afghan civilians, including a child and a woman, were killed on Friday
April 29, 2005, when American warplanes struck a militant hideout in southeastern
Afghanistan. Four militants were also killed during the attack in Uruzgan
province. Two other children were wounded in the attack and were evacuated
by the US military to nearby Kandahar airfield for treatment.
A landmine blast in eastern Afghanistan killed three Afghan counter-narcotics
policemen and wounded two others on Saturday April 30, 2005, as they were
looking for poppy crops in the region. The anti-drugs team was on its way
back from Manogay district in Kunar after an initial assessment of the poppy
fields.
Afghan soldiers and policemen opened fire during an argument at a public gathering in Heart on April 29, 2005, killing two women and wounding seven other people. The shooting erupted during a crowded ceremony to mark the anniversary of the toppling the communist government of president Najibullah in 1992. Afterwards 500 people took to the streets to demonstrate against the army and police.
Arms and munitions hidden by an Afghan warlord in a bunker under his home killed at least 28 people when it exploded on May 2, 2005. The weapons were stored in Bashgah, a remote village 75 miles north of Kabul. Police and emergency teams rushed to the scene but the ensuing fire and a series of secondary blasts damaged the whole village, including the mosque and six houses. Officials in the capital said it was unclear what triggered the blast. The warlord, Jalal Bashgah, is believed to be among the dead.
Afghan National Police (ANP) captured six insurgents Monday May 2, 2005, while on a joint patrol with the US Army outside a small village in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar. The patrol was attacked by a group of insurgents, the police returned fire and captured six insurgents.
A remote-controlled bomb exploded near a police vehicle near Shah Wali Kot, about 20 kilometres north of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan on Monday May 2, 2005, killing two officers and injuring four more. Other blasts near a US base and an American convoy caused no reported casualties. Later on Monday morning, a blast hit a police pickup truck a few hundreds metres from a US base in Kandahar, but caused no casualties. Further north, police said a bomb buried next to the main road from Kabul to Kandahar exploded just after a US military convoy had passed.
On Monday May 2, 2005, the Pakistani police of Karachi have arrested a man wanted by the Afghan government for killing a pro-government commander. Siraj-ul-Haq and his associate were arrested when the police raided a religious seminary in the Malir locality of Karachi city. Siraj is accused of masterminding the murder of commander Abdul Haq who was killed in late 2001.
Female aid workers in Pul-e-Khumri city in the northeastern province of Baghlan province have been advised to stay at home on Tuesday May 3, 2005, after three women were found hanged by the neck on Monday morning in the centre of the city. The bodies had a letter attached threatening women working for foreign aid organisations, according to local sources. One of the three was identified as being involved with the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and the second was a local civil servant. The third remains unidentified. A new group called Junbish Jawanan Islam (the Islamic youth convention) had claimed responsibility for the murders.
On May 4, 2005, we were told that Sweden will take over Britain's military command of security for reconstruction efforts in north Afghanistan around Mazar-i-Sharif to let British troops focus on fighting insurgency in the south. The handover, to be phased in between November and next March, will mean non-NATO member Sweden will raise the number of its troops in Afghanistan to 160 from 90. Swedish Defence Minister Leni Bjorklund met her U.S. counterpart Donald Rumsfeld on Monday to discuss the plans, which she presented to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in Kabul three weeks ago.
US and Afghan forces have killed about 20 insurgents in a battle in the trouble-plagued southern province of Zabul, the U.S. military said on Wednesday May 4, 2005. One Afghan policeman was killed in the fighting on Tuesday and six US personnel and five Afghan policemen were wounded. Fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters of the U.S.-led force were also involved, helping U.S. and Afghan soldiers surround the rebel force of about 25 men.
Militants killed nine Afghan soldiers in an ambush in Shawali Kot, a troubled district of southern Kandahar province, while the Taliban death toll from a battle with US and Afghan troops rose to at least 40 on May 5, 2005.
A bomb at an Internet cafe in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed two Afghans and wounded five on Saturday May 7, 2005. The Internet cafe is at the front of a guesthouse used mostly by Westerners in the heart of the city.
An aide to fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar on May 7, 2005, rejected reports of talks with the United States or the Afghan government and predicted an intensification of Taliban attacks on US and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.
Suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed a vehicle and killed five Afghan reconstruction workers in southeastern Afghanistan on May 18, 2005. The three engineers, their driver and a police guard were killed in Grishk district in the troubled southeastern province of Helmand. The victims were working for the US-based company Chemonics, which has irrigation projects in Helmand, one of Afghanistan's main poppy cultivating provinces. Attacks by the Taliban have increased on troops, members of aid groups, and construction workers in the past month.
Gunmen shot and killed six Afghans in an ambush on a major highway in the country's troubled south on May 20, 2005, the second fatal attack in two days on employees of a US-funded anti-drug project. The victims were transporting the body of one of five victims killed in the earlier assault to the capital, Kabul, for a funeral when militants stopped their vehicle and shot everyone in the head. Also in the country's southern region, two U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded when a bomb exploded near their vehicle. Two of the Afghans killed in yesterday's attack and all five killed Wednesday were thought to be employees of Chemonics International Inc., a Washington-based consulting firm. Two others killed yesterday were relatives of one of Wednesday's victims, and the remaining two were drivers.
On May 21, 2005, a bomb exploded near a US military patrol in southern Afghanistan killing one soldier and wounding three others. The attack on the troops occurred as they were travelling in an armoured vehicle in Zabul province's Shinkay district. Two of the wounded were evacuated to a US-led coalition base near the town of Qalat for medical treatment. The third was taken to a base near the southern city of Kandahar and is expected to be flown to Landstuhl in Germany for further treatment.
Two suspected Taliban militias were killed and 13 others, including the prominent commander Mullah Abdul Bari, arrested, as Afghan forces conducted operations in south Afghanistan on May 24, 2005. Bari was a prominent Taliban military leader. In addition a roadside bomb planted by alleged Taliban targeted a police van in the border town of Spin Boldak of Kandahar wounding at least one police officer. Meanwhile, Taliban's spokesman Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi has accepted responsibility for the remote control bomb attack saying six local police have died in it.
Twelve civilians were killed after unknown assailants opened fire on them in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province on May 29, 2005. In a separate incident, two soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack in the provincial capital Asad Abad. Tribal elder Mohammed Faqir and several relatives and friends were ambushed and killed in the Manogay district of Kunar province, some 170km east of the capital Kabul.
On May 30, 2005, a bomb exploded in Kabul wounding at least seven Afghan civilians. The attack was directed to a NATO truck but it missed its target. The same day a rocket hit a military camp occupied by foreign troops but there was no victim. In both cases the Taliban are thought to be responsible.
On June 1, 2005, the guerrilla is becoming alive again in Afghanistan. In Kandahar a man carrying explosive on himself detonated it in the Abdul Rab Akhundzada Mosque killing 19 people -civilians and policemen- and wounding about 52. General Akram Khakreezwal, head of the police in Kabul, is among the dead. The Taliban rejected any responsibility for the attack. It seems that the bomber was a foreign Arab, probably a member of al-Qaida. The religious ceremony in the mosque followed the killing of Mullah Abdullah Fayaz himself killed on May 29. Mullah Fayaz had previously organised a meeting to demote Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, of his title of "Amirul Mominine" (Emir of all the Believers) that he had kept although he was on the run since the end of 2001.
Two US soldiers were killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan on June 4, 2005. The two soldiers were killed and a third wounded in the southeastern Paktika province when an improvised bomb exploded as their vehicle was passing. An Afghan interpreter was also wounded in the blast. The wounded were evacuated to a US military base at Salerno in neighbouring Khost province. In a separate attack in southern Zabul province, two Taliban were killed and four wounded during an hour-long gun battle after they ambushed a police convoy.
Nearly 150 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since in the operation launched in late 2001 until June 1, 2005.
On Friday June 3, 2005, militants in southern Helmand province killed a pro-government Afghan commander and four others were killed in series of ambushes on Uruzgan-Kandahar road. Meanwhile two Afghan mine clearance workers were killed in the neighbouring province of Helmand, prompting the United Nations to suspend de-mining work across southern Afghanistan.
Two Pakistani nationals were killed on Tuesday June 7, 2005, as their fuel truck came under insurgents attack in the southern border town of Spin Boldak. The truck was also burned to ashes. Taliban militants could be behind this attack.
A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a U.S. military vehicle in southern Afghanistan on Monday June 13, 2005, killing himself and wounding four American soldiers, one seriously. Taliban guerrillas claimed responsibility for the attack.
It was confirmed on June 13, 2005, that more British troops will be deployed in Afghanistan. Up to 5,000 troops may help a planned US bid to re-establish order in the country, with the first wave arriving in October. The offer of extra British manpower was made at a Nato meeting in Brussels last week.
A bomb exploded Tuesday June 14, 2005, near a U.S. military vehicle on a road in central Afghanistan, wounding four American troops and their Afghan interpreter. None of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening, and U.S. aircraft were sent to the scene to transport the wounded to a hospital.
On June 16, 2005, we were told that NATO would send 2,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan to improve the security in the country during the parliamentary elections foreseen for mid-September. These soldiers will mainly come from Rumania, Spain and the Netherlands. This will bring the total number of soldiers in ISAF to 10,400. Italy, Austria and the USA will send a more limited amount of troops.
An attack on a coalition patrol Sunday June 19, 2005, in the Afghan southern province of Helmand led to the death of 15 to 20 militants. The patrol was under attack of small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire by a group of militants in the northwest of Gereshk in Helmand province. US aircraft and attack helicopters engaged the enemy, killing about 15 to 20 militants and destroying one vehicle. No coalition personnel were injured in the incident.
Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan said on Sunday Jyne 19, 2005, that they have executed a provincial police chief and are holding 30 local officials hostage. The officer was captured Friday night during a Taliban raid on the government's district headquarters in the southern province. The insurgents still reportedly control the building and claim they are holding 30 other men hostage. The insurgents say they are putting the men on trial for supporting Afghanistan's U.S.-backed central government; they are determined to prevent parliamentary elections scheduled for September.
On June 19, 2005, the Taliban said that they have killed the Mian Niskin police chief in the Kandahar province. Seven other policemen among the 31 people captured were also killed and their bodies have been found.
Three American soldiers have been injured as their vehicle ran over a mine in southeast Afghan Paktya province Sunday June 19, 2005. The incident, which is the second of its kind in the region over the past two weeks, occurred in Chamkani district when the troops were on routine patrol. Two of these soldiers returned to duty and one was kept for observation. A district chief and his guard have been killed in Hilmand province in southern Afghanistan on Monday.
On June 21, 2005, we were told that three Pakistani armed with submachine guns and grenades have been arrested in Afghanistan. They are believed to be part of a group trying to kill Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador in the country. They were arrested in the eastern province of Laghman where the ambassador was inaugurating some reconstruction projects.
Afghanistan's Defence Ministry said on June 26, 2005, that Afghan troops, supported by U.S. forces, killed 178 Taliban fighters and detained over 80 others in the southern province of Kandahar. The fighting has taken place in the Mia-Nishin district of Kandahar Province since 20 June. About 20,000 U.S.-led troops are presently hunting Taliban remnants and their Al-Qaeda allies, mainly in the south and southeast region's of the country.
Death toll in an explosion that rocked the northeastern Afghan province of Takhar Saturday June 25, 2005, has risen to eight. The explosion that occurred at ammunition dump in Rustaq district of Takhar province claimed the lives of eight persons including three foreigners. ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) soldiers were observing the operation of segregating and preparing for further destruction of a big amount of ammunition when the explosion occurred. Several Afghans were also injured in the explosion and had been taken to local hospitals for treatment. The three foreigners who lost their lives in the explosion, according to Afghan sources, are German soldiers working with NATO-led ISAF to help stabilize security in Afghanistan.
On June 28, 2005, a U.S. military helicopter crashed during an anti-guerrilla mission in eastern Afghanistan after being hit by ground fire and the fate of 17 U.S. troops aboard was not known. The twin-rotor Chinook crashed in remote and mountainous Kunar province while bringing troops to reinforce soldiers on the ground carrying out an anti-al Qaeda operation. The aircraft received direct and indirect fire as it was approaching its landing zone and crashed about 1-2 km away. Kunar Governor Asadullah Wafa said a rocket hit the helicopter and a spokesman for the Taliban, Abdul Latif Hakimi, claimed the guerrillas shot down the aircraft in the village of Shorak using "a new type of weapon". A U.S. military statement said U.S. and Afghan troops had sealed off the crash site to block any enemy movement toward or away from it and U.S. aircraft were flying overhead.
The US military said on June 29, 2005, that hostile fire probably brought down a helicopter that crashed in eastern Afghanistan. A search is still under way for the 17 crewmembers of the Chinook helicopter in the province of Konar. It is not known if there are any survivors. The hardline Taliban militia has claimed it downed the helicopter.
On June 30, 2005, Pentagon officials have confirmed that all 16 bodies (not 17 as said before) have been recovered from the site where one of their Chinook helicopters crashed earlier this week. The Taliban say they shot down the aircraft, which was carrying soldiers to the eastern province of Konar. The dead on the helicopter included eight Navy Seals and eight Army aircrews. Earlier, the governor of Konar province, Asadullah Waffa, told the BBC a rocket had brought down the helicopter. He said the attack was the work of well-funded militants who had entered Afghanistan planning to spread chaos before September's parliamentary elections.
On July 1, 2005, U.S. forces are searching for an elite American military team missing in the same area of Afghanistan where a U.S. helicopter was shot down trying to rescue it. The Taliban claimed militants had captured one of the men.
On July 1, 2005, hundreds of Afghan troops raided a Taliban hideout in the mountains of central Afghanistan;18 rebels and two soldiers were killed. Security forces assaulted the rebel camp in Uruzgan province's Charchino district to flush out the insurgents who have been blamed for a spate of kidnappings and killings across the region.
On July 1, 2005, US fighter planes have bombed a suspected Taleban hideout in the same area of eastern Afghanistan where US servicemen are missing; 25 people had been killed in two air raids on a house in Chechal village. According to the American forces, the target was an "enemy compound" in Kunar province. Villagers who went to help those killed and injured in the first raid were hit by the second strike. Afghan security forces had been sent to the area to find out who had been in the houses that were hit. At least 39 people have been killed in three other clashes in Afghanistan.
Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan said on July 9, 2005, that they have executed a US commando they had been holding hostage since last week. A Taliban spokesman has been quoted in a Pakistani news report saying the American was killed on Saturday morning local time. However, a US military spokesman in Kabul says there's no proof of the claim and the search for the man is continuing. The US soldier was among four who disappeared last week in eastern Afghanistan after a helicopter sent to rescue them was shot down, killing all 16 on board. One of the group was rescued, while two others have been found dead.
Germany will station up to 3,000 peacekeeping soldiers in almost all of Afghanistan whose aim will be to support the reconstruction of the war-torn country, the online site of Der Spiegel news magazine cited Saturday on July 9, 2005, a confidential German Defence Ministry document. German troops should be "capable of backing NATO operations within the administrative region of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)". The German military mandate will no longer be restricted to only Kabul and the northern Afghan region of Kunduz. At present time, there are some 2,250 German peacekeeping soldiers stationed in Afghanistan of which 450 troops are deployed in Kunduz.
Four "dangerous enemy combatants" have escaped from the main US base in Afghanistan on July 11, 2005. A huge manhunt was launched around the Bagram air base north of the capital Kabul, after the men, said to be Arabs, escaped. It is the first time any prisoner has escaped from Bagram. Hundreds of detainees, most of them Afghan nationals but a number of senior foreign al-Qaeda suspects, are held at the detention centre. The men who escaped were militants from Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya.
On Thursday July 14, 2005, fighting between rebels and Afghan and American forces left 17 insurgents dead, while suspected Taliban gunmen killed a senior pro-government Muslim cleric on Wednesday. The 17 were killed in fighting on Monday and Tuesday in the Daychopan district of Zabul province. Six other insurgents were captured in the clashes. A rocket-propelled grenade launcher, 14 rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons were found in a mosque in the area.
Unknown armed men shot dead another pro-government clergyman on Wednesday July 13, 2005. Armed men riding motorcycle shot dead Mawlawi Salih Mohammad the head of Local Religious scholars Council in Helmand's provincial capital Lashkargah. No one has claimed responsibility for the bloody attack so far. Another pro-government clergy Mawlawi Agha Jan was slaughtered along with his wife in their house Friday night in Afghanistan's southeast province of Paktika.
Taliban fighters claim to have found on July 15, 2005, the four Arab detainees who escaped from an American base in Afghanistan on Monday. "They are four Muslim brothers," said the Taliban. The Americans continue the search for the four detainees, who escaped from the Bagram Air Base, north of the capital Kabul. The four, who were described by the US forces as being "dangerous enemy combatants" are reported to be of Syrian, Kuwaiti, Libyan and Saudi nationalities. Some 450 prisoners are housed at the Bagram air base, all of whom are believed to be members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network or Taliban fighters.
Pakistan's military says U.S-led coalition forces operating in Afghanistan have killed 24 suspected Islamic militants on the Pakistani side of the two countries' border. The incident took place on Thursday July 14, 2005, in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, which borders Afghanistan. Coalition forces inside Afghanistan had engaged a group of insurgents along the border with Pakistan, opposite North Waziristan.
Four US soldiers have been wounded when an improvised explosive device near the Sharona Provincial Reconstruction Team struck their vehicle in the southern province of Paktika on Sunday July 17, 2005. The four US servicemen are being treated by US medical personnel for minor wounds. So far, almost 170 US soldiers have been killed in and around Afghanistan since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001.
U.S. and Afghan forces discovered and disposed of an unexploded bomb and a suspected similar device in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday July 20, 2005. Afghan intelligence and police officers also found 18 anti-tank missiles north of Zabul province's Qalat district, while U.S. forces uncovered 50 mortar rounds in a cave in central Bamiyan province. Militants are increasingly using roadside bombs to target U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces. Rebels often collect old land mines left over from a quarter-century of war and then rebury them on roads commonly used by the security forces, or use the explosives in them for improvised bombs. Separately, militants fired three rocket-propelled grenades at a police station in eastern Logar province's Charkh district late Tuesday, but the grenades fell short of the building, said provincial police chief Khan Mohammed.
To provide additional security during the run-up to parliamentary elections, NATO military alliance is expected to send more than 2,000 extra troops to Afghanistan. The troops are being provided by the Netherlands, Romania, Italy, Austria and the United States. Once the new troops are deployed, NATO will have 11,400 soldiers in Afghanistan, with Germany, Turkey, Canada, Spain and Italy providing the biggest contributions.
On Thursday July 21, 2005, we were told that fighting across Afghanistan left 14 people dead, including nine tribesmen killed by suspected Taliban rebels. The nine ethnic Hazaras were killed when rebels raided their village Monday in central Uruzgan province. Then on Wednesday, other residents of the victims' village raided a nearby ethnic Pashtun hamlet, killing four people. Meanwhile, US forces killed a militant and wounded another after coming under attack in neighboring Zabul province Wednesday. Also Wednesday in the country's main western city of Herat, two small bombs exploded, but caused no casualties or damage, in an attack thought to be linked to a local power struggle. Four people had been arrested and were being interrogated. Security officials also seized bombs in other parts of Herat.
A judge in Afghanistan was gunned down Saturday July 23, 2005, apparently by members of the Taliban, which has been attacking officials in advance of upcoming elections. Two men on a motorcycle shot Judge Qazi Namatullah in Kandahar Province. A man claiming to speak for the Taliban said the judge was killed because he was working with the government. The Taliban also claimed it was behind a bomb attack Friday on Mohammad Shafi, a local official of the Kandahar Province. Shafi died Saturday. In the past two months, the Taliban is believed to have shot four Muslim clerics working with the government in the southern part of the country. Also on Saturday, three election workers were freed in Nuristan Province in the northeast.
On July 27, 2005, Canada has decided to send more troops to Afghanistan to boost the US-led war on terror in the post-Taliban nation. The contingent with a strength of 250 soldiers will be stationed in the form of Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in southern Kandahar province, the former stronghold of Taliban. However, Canada did not say whether the new Canadian contingent will serve under US military or NATO troops. Some 800 Canadian troops are presently serving in Afghanistan within the framework of over 10,000-strong ISAF multinational force to enhance peace and security here.
Arab mujahedeen militants in Afghanistan, who entered the country to fight alongside al-Qaeda and the Taliban against the forces that toppled the extremist Islamic regime, have announced that they have a new commander. The man - identified as Egyptian national Abu Khalas - will command militants fighting in the eastern region of Konar.
The Ministry of Defence will transfer a marine battalion to northern Afghanistan beginning on Friday July 29, 2005. The battalion, augmented with naval personnel and army, air force and military police units, will be loaned to NATO to support the orderly progress of elections in the northern provinces. The Dutch detachment consists of 750 troops, most of whom will be stationed at Mazar e Sharif airport. Another platoon of more than 30 marines will be stationed at the Dutch base at Pol-e Khomri in Baghlan province. The posting will last through October.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers killed an important Taliban commander and his son Thursday July 28, 2005, and captured 10 militants in Afghanistan's southern province of Uruzgan. Mullah Tor and his son were killed in an operation carried out by ANA soldiers in Charchino district of Uruzgan. Ten Taliban militants were captured during the operation. One the same day, three suspected Taliban militants were killed and 15 others arrested as US and Afghan troops encountered with the militants in Uruzgan.
Two crewmembers were injured on July 29, 2005, when a U.S. military AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed during a training mission on a range near Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Hostile fire is not suspected in the incident. The injured crewmembers are being treated at the base.
Taliban insurgents killed a parliamentary candidate along with his six bodyguards in the restive Uruzgan province Friday July 29, 2005. Engineer Fidai and his six bodyguards ere killed in Gizab district of Uruzgan province. Fidai was the second parliamentary candidate killed by Taliban militias over the past week.
On July 31, 2005, the Afghan defence ministry said that security forces
have made their largest weapons haul in months. Thousands of missiles, mortar
rounds and artillery shells were found in central Ghazni province.
&&&
An American army Apache helicopter was shot down by a surface to air missile
in outskirts of Kabul near Bagram Airbase on August 2, 2005. Four American
soldiers were killed in the crash. The chopper was downed during a routine
training mission, with two injured in the incident and that there was no
report of hostile fire. The army statement also confirmed another helicopter
crash that also injured two airmen. The Taliban however have claimed responsibility
for the incident and said they have once again shocked the American army
with a lethal attack. More than fifteen helicopters have been destroyed
since 2001, including Apaches, Chinooks. Black Hawks and Cobra's.
A policeman was killed and two others wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside
landmine in the Dand Patan district of the southern Paktia province on Friday
July 29, 2005. The victims were on routine patrol in the area. In Uruzgan
province, the Taliban ambushed an American army convoy killing several allied
soldiers. Following the incident, the Americans called in air support and
bombed Taliban positions, before the Mujahideen escaped the scene. Eight
Afghan soldiers were said to have been killed in that clash and four others
were killed in a clash with Taliban Mujahideen in the district of Charchio.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi has said in a press statement that
they attacked and destroyed an Afghan military vehicle completely killing
30 Afghan soldiers in the process. According to Hakimi, one Taliban fighter
was also injured in the incident. Three Pakistani soldiers were killed in
a clash in South Waziristan area in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan
and Pakistan. In a latest incident, Al-Qaida fighters attacked the Pak Army
when it was conducting an anti-insurgent operation in the area. In another
incident a Mosque and Madrassa was besieged by the Pakistani army. Local
tribesmen resisted them and fired on soldiers, with several Pakistani soldiers
reported injured. Unknown gunmen killed another pro-government tribal leader.
This latest killing makes a total of 58 Tribal heads killed by anti-government
forces in the past few months. Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters have warned
those siding with Pakistani army or American forces with the threat of death.
Austria will send 93 soldiers to Afghanistan on Monday August 1, 2005, to help maintain security in the country during the upcoming parliamentary elections. The first group of 82 soldiers will fly to the Afghan capital Kabul and then go to the northern region of Kunduz, which is about 350 km from Kabul. The rest 11 soldiers and armoured vehicles will arrive in the country before August 7. These Austrian soldiers will serve in a reconstruction team headed by Germany for three months and they will be responsible for maintaining security during the elections rather than taking a combat role. Austrian Defence Minister Gunther Platter said Monday that the reinforcement of troops in Afghanistan would not increase the risk of an Islamist terrorist attack in Austria. This is the largest dispatch of soldiers to Afghanistan in Austrian history. Back in February 2002, the first five Austrian soldiers were sent.
Two US soldiers drowned when their Humvee vehicle slid into a river in Afghanistan on Friday August 6, 2005. Two other soldiers escaped before the vehicle entered the Kunar River northeast of Jalalabad. One was treated and released by US military medical personnel at the scene and the other was transported to Bagram Airfield for treatment. He is in good condition and is expected to be released soon.
Afghanistan August 7, 2005:
- Eight suspected Taliban militants were killed after Afghan and U.S.-led
troops raided their hideouts in southeastern Zabul Province.
- One Afghan policeman was killed when militants attacked a police checkpoint
in eastern Wardak Province.
- The U.S.-led military coalition said it detained a suicide bomber at a
base near the Pakistani border as he tried to detonate a series of explosives
attached to his body.
- Afghan troops killed a regional Taliban commander and captured six others
in the central province of Uruzgan.
- Gunmen in a car killed five Afghan civilians including a woman when they
sprayed their vehicle with bullets. The attack took place in the violence-plagued
province of Helmand but was not believed to be related to the insurgency
against Afghan and coalition troops.
A joint medical team of Macedonia, Albania and Croatia left here Sunday August 9, 2005, for peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Each of the three signatory-countries of the Adriatic Charter sends one doctor, two medical technicians and one nurse to form the 12-member medical team. They will join the mobile surgery hospital of the Greek Army stationed at the Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan.
The U.S. military signalled August 8, 2005, it plans to hand over responsibility for security across Afghanistan to NATO in 2006, half a decade after an American-led coalition ousted the Taliban. However it did not say exactly when the transfer of power to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or the withdrawal of American troops from the still violence-plagued country, would take place.
At least 16 Afghan insurgents and one US soldier were killed Monday August 8, 2005, during a fight in the southern province of Zabul. The US soldier was killed when an Afghan and US patrol conducting operations aimed at routing insurgents from the Deh Chopan area of Zabul came under attack by insurgents with small-arms fire and rocket propelled grenades. US and coalition aircraft arrived at the scene and provided continuous close air support, the coalition said in a new release.
A German soldier serving with international forces in Afghanistan was killed in a traffic accident. Three other soldiers, two Germans and a Hungarian, suffered slight injuries when the vehicle travelling in a convoy overturned on Sunday August 7, 2005, near Kabul after the driver lost control in a deeply rutted road. Germany has 2,250 troops serving in the 8,000-member international peacekeeping force run by NATO in Afghanistan. Defence Minister Peter Struck says he wants to raise the number of Germans serving in Afghanistan to 3,000 later this year.
One US service member has been killed and another injured in explosive device attack near Ghazni, a central province of Afghanistan on Wednesday August 10, 2005.
A Taliban commander, Qari Amadullah, was shot dead near Wazikhwa in eastern
Afghanistan on August 9,2005. Amadullah was believed to have commanded up
to 50 Taliban fighters in the region and was thought to be in possession
of a number of weapon systems to include rockets and rocket propelled grenades.
Amadullah was killed during a clash with Afghan soldiers and U.S. paratroopers
in which five other militants died and three U.S. servicemen were wounded.
One American soldier died in a training accident involving explosives near
Tarin Kot in the southern province of Kandahar. Forty-one U.S. servicemen
have died combat in Afghanistan this year, the bloodiest period for Washington
since it sent troops to help overthrow the Taliban. Hundreds of Afghan soldiers,
police and civilians have also been killed in fighting led by remnants of
the Taliban.
Spain flew 85 troops Friday August 2, 2005, to Afghanistan where they will join international forces to boost security for the upcoming parliamentary elections in September. They are the last of the 500 Spanish troops to be deployed in southwest Afghanistan.
About August 14, 2005, hundreds of American marines and Afghan Special
Forces have moved into remote Afghan mountains in eastern Kunar province,
near the border with Pakistan, to retake a valley controlled by rebels suspected
of ambushing a team of US commandos and shooting down a Special Forces helicopter.
The offensive is the biggest yet against those believed responsible for
the twin attacks on 28 June, the deadliest blow to American forces in Afghanistan
since ousting the Taliban in 2001. Three members of a four-man Navy SEAL
team were killed in the ambush, and all 16 troops on board the Chinook helicopter
that was sent to rescue them died when it was hit by a rocket-propelled
grenade.
Seven American soldiers have died in the week from August 7 to 14, 2005,
as well as dozens of suspected rebels and civilians.
On August 14, 2005, we were told that at least 10 Taliban militias were killed and 14 others were detained in past three days in Afghanistan. Troops of Afghanistan National Army (ANA) killed six suspected Taliban operatives and captured 13 others in the insurgency-hit southeast Paktika province late last week. According to the US-led coalition forces, at least four Taliban insurgents were killed and one was captured Friday in Uruzgan and Kabul respectively. Three insurgents were killed and two Afghan National Police were wounded during a firefight near the city of Deh Rahwod in southern Afghanistan's Uruzgan province on Friday. One insurgent was killed during an attack south of Kabul in which an improvised explosive device was detonated as an Afghan and US military convoy passed. There were no Afghan or US forces injured and only minor damage to one military vehicle.
The Spanish defence ministry says 17 of its Nato peacekeepers have been killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on August 16, 2005. Five other Spanish troops were hurt when a second Puma helicopter on a training exercise made an emergency landing. Some reports blamed mechanical failure but Madrid said it could not rule out that the incident near Herat, western Afghanistan, was caused by enemy fire. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was deeply saddened by the crash and said Afghanistan would "remember the services of these brave soldiers who have made sacrifices so that the people of Afghanistan could live in peace". A top Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, said their fighters had shot down the helicopter but his claims could not be verified.
Fighting across southern Afghanistan has left 28 suspected Taliban rebels dead, officials said Monday August 15, 2005, amid stepped up violence in the countdown to crucial legislative elections next month. Meanwhile, U.S. Marines and Afghan Special Forces in eastern Kunar province Monday pushed deeper into Korengal Valley, which is controlled by militants suspected of ambushing a team of U.S. commandos and shooting down a Special Forces helicopter on June 28. The bloodiest battle between Afghan forces and the Taliban occurred Sunday in Zabul province when Afghan forces attacked a group of suspected militants, killing 16 of them and arresting one.
Taliban guerrillas have kidnapped a Lebanese national working as an engineer on a U.S.-funded road project in southern Afghanistan on August 14, 2005. A provincial Afghan official confirmed that Mohammad Reza had gone missing, but he could not confirm that the Lebanese engineer had been kidnapped by Taliban insurgents. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said Reza was seized along with his car on Sunday evening while passing through the restive province of Zabul.
A roadside bomb killed an Afghan policeman and wounded 16 others on Wednesday August 17, 2005, in the southern city of Kandahar. The bomb was triggered by remote control and Taliban insurgents are to be blamed for the attack. On Tuesday, eight Afghan troops were wounded in a similar attack in adjacent Uruzgan province. Two U.S. military personnel were also wounded in a clash with insurgents in the eastern province of Kunar on Tuesday.
Hundreds of Spanish and other NATO troops gathered at an Afghan airport on Thursday August 18, 2005, to send home the bodies of 17 Spanish peacekeepers killed in a helicopter crash this week. Spanish Defence Minister Jose Bono attended the solemn ceremony. The helicopter crashed on Tuesday during an exercise near Herat city in the west of the country. It is believed that it was an accident. A second helicopter flying nearby spotted a column of black smoke rising from the scene and, suspecting there may have been hostile fire, made an emergency landing that slightly wounded five Spanish soldiers.
A roadside bomb explosion in southern Afghanistan on Thursday August 18, 2005, killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded two. The soldiers were travelling in an armoured vehicle north of Kandahar, part of a convoy supporting a road construction project. The two wounded soldiers were evacuated to Kandahar Airfield for medical treatment. Both were in stable condition.
The Taliban movement on Thursday August 18, 2005, set free Ahmad Riza, the Lebanese engineer of a Turkish construction company after the firm agreed to pull out from Afghanistan. However, Taliban's spokesman said that the hardliner movement through direct contact with the Turkish Construction Company decided to release the engineer after the company agreed to withdraw from the post-Taliban nation. A Lebanese national, Riza, was abducted by Taliban last week near Zabul's provincial capital Qalat and the Taliban threatened to execute him if his company refuses to leave Afghanistan.
Spain's King, Crown Prince and prime minister joined mourning relatives on August 19, 2005, for the arrival of the bodies of 17 Spanish peacekeepers killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan this week. Relatives of the victims, flown in from around Spain, sobbed as the coffins were unloaded from the plane and King Juan Carlos and Crown Prince Felipe looked on as military band played music. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Defence Minister Jose Bono also attended the ceremony in a show of support for the armed forces.
Afghanistan August 21, 2005:
- A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers and wounded three others on
August 21, 2005, as they were patrolling in Zabul province's Daychopan district,
southern Afghanistan. This is the deadliest attack on American forces here
in nearly two months. The three wounded soldiers were hit by shrapnel and
were in stable condition.
- Militant killed a senior pro-government Islamic leader and two Afghan
policemen.
- On Friday, a U.S. Marine was killed in a clash near Asadabad in eastern
Afghanistan, while a day earlier, a roadside bomb killed two U.S soldiers.
- Seven U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan over the past four
days. A roadside bomb exploded late Saturday under a police vehicle also
in Zabul province, killing two police officers.
- A roadside bomb exploded late Saturday under a police vehicle also in
Zabul province, killing two police officers.
- In southern Kandahar province, gunmen riding a motorbike shot dead cleric
Mawlawi Abdullah - a senior figure in the Islamic Ulama Council - and a
colleague as they walked out of a mosque after praying at dawn.
- In the eastern province of Kunar, rebels ambushed two tanker trucks hauling
fuel to an American military base, burning the vehicles but letting the
drivers go.
Spain flew out 24 soldiers to Afghanistan on Monday August 22, 2005, to replace those killed in a crash while on NATO peacekeeping duties there. The crash was NATO's largest single loss of life in Afghanistan. In May 2003, 62 Spanish peacekeepers returning home from Afghanistan died when their Russian-built YAK-42 plane crashed in northwest Turkey.
US-led coalition attack aircraft and ground troops as well as Afghan forces pounded suspected Taliban rebels in three separate fire fights in southern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 militants on Thursday August 25, 2005. The fighting in Kandahar province occurred after a joint US-Afghan patrol spotted a rebel observation post. Ten warplanes and attack helicopters were called in, killing five suspected militants. On Wednesday in Uruzgan province, coalition aircraft killed five alleged insurgents after a firefight with troops on the ground. Two suspected guerrillas were detained. In a separate battle Wednesday, near the border between Uruzgan and Kandahar, a B-52 bomber and A-10 aircraft bombarded an unknown number of militants after they were spotted carrying weapons. The number of insurgents killed is not known but the coalition and Afghan forces suffered no casualties in any of the battles. The Afghans also confirmed the deaths of six alleged rebels Tuesday in a battle in Zabul province. The six were killed after being spotted burying bombs on a roadside. A search of the area uncovered two bombs, six AK-47 assault rifles and two anti-tank mines.
The sixth group of 50 Croatian peacekeepers and a medical unit arrived in Kabul early Wednesday August 24, 2005. The contingent will be stationed at camps of the multinational peacekeeping forces in Kabul for six months. Also on Wednesday, 50 Croatian troops previously deployed in Afghanistan on NATO's peacekeeping mission were replaced and returned home. The four-member medical team, sent for the first time by Croatia, will join their colleagues from Albania and Macedonia to cooperate with the multinational forces. The Croatian parliament recently ratified a resolution, approving the increase of the number of Croatia's peacekeepers in Afghanistan.
Two Japanese schoolteachers from Hiroshima Prefecture, western Japan, on vacation may have gone missing in Pakistan or Afghanistan, and Japanese authorities were investigating on Friday August 26, 2005. The two -a man and a woman- travelled to the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta but officials lost track of them after that.
On Saturday August 27, 2005, a rocket attack was launched on a Germany military camp in north-east Afghanistan, just hours after German defence minister Peter Struck began a visit to the country. No one was injured, but three American soldiers were hurt on Friday when militants attacked a US military convoy to the west of the capital Kabul.
A British man has been kidnapped in Afghanistan on August 31, 2005, after the convoy he was travelling in was attacked. The man was with a firm providing security for a road project. At least three policemen are believed dead after the ambush in the west of the country. The party's interpreter was also reportedly abducted. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press that they were behind the attack. He was in a convoy of vehicles with armed guards from the American company US Protection and Investigation, which is helping protect the project to build a major road from the southern city of Kandahar to the western city of Herat. They were accompanied by Afghan police escorts and were heading to their heavily fortified camp nearby, according to others in the convoy, when three cars drove past at speed.
The U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces have killed a suspected Taliban commander and three of his fighters in the country's south, while six other rebels died in a clash with Afghan police on Monday August 29, 2005. Payenda Mohammed, who was thought to have led about 150 rebels, was killed in a fierce battle in Kandahar province. He was believed responsible for numerous rocket attacks, ambushes and other assaults. At least three other militants were killed and 15 wounded in the fighting, in which A-10 warplanes and attack helicopters bombed caves along a ridge where the militants had sought shelter and had stashed weapons. No Afghan or coalition troops were wounded.
An American soldier and an Afghan interpreter were killed in a clash between coalition forces and militants that also left a regional Taliban command Thor Mullah Manan, dead on September 1, 2005. The U.S. and Afghan forces were moving into position for an offensive operation when the firefight broke out Thursday in Daychopan district of the volatile southern province of Zabul. Manan was in command of three other Taliban sub-commanders and responsible for the movement of equipment and personnel throughout the northwest Zabul province.
The bodies of a slain man and woman found Friday September 2, 2005, in southern Afghanistan are possibly those of Japanese tourists who went missing along the Afghan-Pakistani border last month. The bodies, with gunshot wounds, were found in the desert, about 7 kilometres from the main road between the southern city of Kandahar and the capital, Kabul, Kandahar Province. Jun Fukusho and Shinobu Hasegawa were both teachers of a municipal government-run junior high school in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture.
A Briton kidnapped in Afghanistan was found dead on Saturday September 3, 2005; Taliban rebels said they killed him. Briton David Addison, who the Afghan government said was working on security for a road project, was kidnapped on the main road between the southwestern city of Kandahar and the western city of Herat with an interpreter in the west of the country on Wednesday when gunmen ambushed their convoy, killing three police escorts. In a separate incident, the Taliban said they killed an election candidate and four government officials. An Afghan doctor said two bodies found dumped in a desert in the south were Japanese tourists who went missing last month. The two, a man and a woman, had been shot in the head. Sixteen Taliban were killed in a battle in the central province of Uruzgan on Saturday.
US and Afghan troops said on September 6, 2005, they have captured at least 40 members of the Taliban militia in an offensive operation carried out in the village of Laram, in the southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan. The operation took place on Sunday, but it is still not known whether any senior commanders from the former regime were among those captured. Afghan troops are still searching for a district chief running in the parliamentary elections on September 18 and three others, who are thought to have been kidnapped after their vehicle was ambushed late on Friday to the north of Kandahar. Another parliamentary candidate, Habibullah Khan from the Garmser district of the southern Helmand province, died in hospital after being seriously injured on Sunday morning by a mine placed outside his home. Eight policemen were also killed over the weekend, including a police chief from the Helmand province, his son and three bodyguards, who were ambushed by militants, two of whom also died. In the southern Zabul province four other policemen died in two separate incidents. Hope has run out for David Addison, the British engineer kidnapped on Wednesday, along with his Afghan interpreter, after the convoy he was travelling in was attacked. British Foreign Officer minister Kim Howells released a statement saying that they believe a body found in western Afghanistan is Addison's. The engineer had been working on a project to build a road between Kandahar in the south and Herat in the west. Howells has blamed the killing on the Taliban.
A car has exploded in Girishk, a southern Afghan town on September 7, 2005, killing its three occupants and a passer-by in what appeared to be a bungled suicide attack. The car was passing a policeman's house when it exploded but that was not believed to have been the target. It seems their aim was to carry out a suicide on attack on the Americans but it went off early.
At least 30 militants were killed and 60 were captured Friday September 9, 2005, in an operation led by Afghan and US-led Coalition forces in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. The operation was carried out in the Girishk district of Helmand and a large number of weapons were found. Taliban militants killed at least 16 people, including a British engineer and a candidate, in Kandahar, Zabul and other southern provinces in the past few days. On Wednesday, four people were killed and two were injured in a suicide attack in the Girishk district of Helmand. On Saturday, militants ambushed a car that the defence minister was supposed to be travelling in. But the minister escaped the assassination attempt by taking a helicopter instead.
The United States said on September 14, 2005, it is planning to trim its troops posted in Afghanistan by roughly 20 per cent next year if NATO-led troops from Europe continue to widen their role in making the country secure. Approximately 4000 of the 20,000 troops posted in Kabul could be sent home. However, all depends on what types of forces NATO would commit and its willingness for them to engage in combat against insurgents.
Seven suspected Taliban militants were killed on September 16, 2005, as the insurgents came in contact with government troops in Afghan southern Zabul province. The gunfire was one of the heaviest in the area over the past several months; the rebels fled the area after receiving casualties.
A US helicopter has crashed in southern Afghanistan on September 25, 2005, killing all five crew on board. The CH-47 Chinook helicopter came down during an operation near Daychopan, in the southern province of Zabul. The helicopter had dropped off troops and was returning to base when it crashed. There is no indication of hostile fire, the US military said. Abdul Latif Hakimi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, said: "We brought the helicopter down with an anti-aircraft rocket."
A roadside bomb wounded two U.S. soldiers on patrol Friday September23, 2005, near Kandahar city, a former Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. About eight militants fired at the patrol after the bomb exploded, the statement said. Three rebels were captured.
Two civilians and two policemen were killed on September 26, 2005, when a bomb ripped through their car. The remote-controlled device in insurgency-hit Helmand province was believed to have been planted by rebels allied to the ousted Taliban regime.
Afghanistan on Wednesday September 28, 2005:
- A suicide attacker on a motorbike detonated a bomb outside a military
training centre in Kabul, killing nine soldiers, wounding 28 other people.
It was the deadliest bombing in the capital in at least a year.
- Outgoing Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali called for removal
of government officials involved in drug trafficking, insisted his resignation
had nothing to do with any strains in his relationship with President Hamid
Karzai.
- Unidentified gunmen in central Afghanistan shot and killed an Afghan development
worker and wounded his Bangladeshi colleague.
- Afghan authorities arrested a suspect in the kidnapping earlier this year
of Italian aid worker Clementina Cantoni. Temur Shah, detained Tuesday,
also is accused of abducting and killing the son of an Afghan businessman
and threatening a bank chairman in an extortion attempt a few days ago.
U.S. military spokesmen say four American soldiers have been wounded by an insurgent's roadside bomb that hit their armoured vehicle in northeastern Afghanistan on September30, 2005. The troops were attacked as they returned from defusing another bomb near Asadabad town, in Kunar province. The wounded were evacuated to Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, where they are in stable condition.
A US soldier and an Afghan soldier have been killed in an attack in southern Afghanistan on Friday September 31, 2005. The small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade attack also wounded another U.S. soldier and two Afghan National Army troops during combat operations north of the city of Kandahar. This brought to 198 the number of U.S. service members killed in and around Afghanistan since the 2001 campaign.
U.S. Central Command said Saturday October 1, 2005, that Afghan National Police captured a key Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan this week. Abdul Gafar was captured after a local man reported his location to Afghan forces. Gafar is the mastermind behind a number of improvised explosive devices, rocket and small arms attacks against Afghan and U.S. forces in Ghazni province.
Suspected Taliban rebels attacked a police checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, killing a policeman and a bystander on Sunday October 2, 2005. Four other police were wounded in the assault Saturday near Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province. The militants fled. A clash in northwestern Faryab province on Saturday killed two people, including the brother of an election candidate, and wounded six others.
Afghan government troops killed 28 insurgents on October 1, 2005, in an operation in southeastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. The operation on Sunday night was launched after militants attacked an army position in the Angor Ada area of Paktika province. Eight government troops were wounded in the operation, which lasted for more than four hours.
NATO will add more troops to its forces in Afghanistan in preparation for its planned takeover of all operations in the nation. An additional 6,000 troops will be added to the international force already 10,000 strong, said NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Tuesday on October 5, 2005. U.S. forces currently lead the operation and are responsible for patrolling the country's volatile and violent southern region, but Nato could eventually takes over.
Four Afghan policemen have been accidentally killed by American soldiers
who opened fire on their vehicle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand
on October 7, 2005. According to American military sources, the US-led coalition
troops were in contact with enemy forces in the province's Gereshk district,
when a vehicle with five armed men on board approached them. The soldiers
opened fire on the vehicle, killing four policemen and injuring one.
The men were all policemen but they were dressed in civilian clothing. The
US military has ordered an investigation into the incident.
Four Britons have been injured on October 9, 2005, in southern Afghanistan after a suicide bomber rammed their armoured vehicle with a car packed with explosives. The attack happened on a main road about a kilometre from a US military base, near the city of Kandahar. Two were badly hurt, while the two others suffered minor injuries. All four worked for security company ArmorGroup. The firm was unavailable for comment. Two passers-by were also injured, when the Toyota Corolla was driven into the Britons' Landcruiser.
A US soldier's death in southern Afghanistan on October 9, 2005, brought to 200 the number of US troops killed here since the Taliban was ousted in 2001. The soldier, killed after stepping on a landmine, was part of an offensive patrol in a part of Helmand province. It was not immediately clear whether the mine had been recently laid and was meant as an attack on the patrol, or whether it was one of thousands of mines dotted across the country left over from a quarter-century of war.
Six local people were killed and five others injured Monday October 10, 2005, in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan southern province of Kandahar.
Several attacks suspected to be the work of Taliban insurgents killed five
aid workers and six police officers in Afghanistan Wednesday October 12,
2005.
- The attack on the aid workers took place outside Kandahar, when gunmen
opened fire and threw a hand grenade at their vehicle. Two doctors, one
nurse, one pharmacist and the organizer of the mobile health team died in
the ambush and three other people were wounded.
- The policemen were killed when their vehicles were ambushed in Uruzgan
province.
- In Kabul, there were four rocket attacks. One rocket exploded outside
the residence of the Canadian ambassador, injuring two Afghan guards. Two
other rockets landed near a military base of the International Security
Assistance Forces, while the fourth hit a government building.
Ten suspected Taliban operatives were killed in southern Uruzgan province as the US air attacks targeted the militants' hideout Wednesday October 12, 2005. The US war planes stroked militias' hideout in Charchino district. The air attacks took place after the militants attacked a police van and killed six constables. The militants in the neighbouring Helmand province in a bloody ambush killed 18 policemen on Tuesday.
Rockets fired on Friday October 14, 2005, at a U.S.-led coalition air base in southern Afghanistan damaged two British Harrier warplanes that were parked on the ground. No one was wounded in the attack on Kandahar Airfield. Shrapnel from the rockets slammed into the jets inflicting some damage but nothing major. Briton has six Harriers based at the airfield near Kandahar city, a former Taliban stronghold. The attack was believed to have been the first to damage war planes at the coalition's main air base in southern Afghanistan.
Suspected Taliban militants gunned down a member of a provincial religious council and two security officers in separate attacks in southern Afghanistan on Monday October 16, 2005. Mawlawi Mohammad Gul, a member of the religious council of the southern Helmand province, was shot dead in the provincial capital Lashkar-Gah on Sunday. Gul had been walking home after prayers when the militants shot him. In another attack in Helmand on Sunday, Taliban fighters opened fire on a group of security officers talking together near a bazaar in Sangeen district.
Suspected militants gunned down the director of intelligence department and three of his bodyguards in the restive Helmand province in south Afghanistan on Monday October 17, 2005. He, along with three bodyguards, was driving towards Sangin district when fell prey to enemies. Taliban's spokesman Qari Yusuf claimed responsibility for the attack and said fighters of the movement punished them for their support to Americans.
Suspected Taliban shot dead a district chief in the Kandahar province in south Afghanistan Tuesday October 17, 2005. Ahmadullah Khan the district chief of Arghandab district was gunned down when he was offering his prayers inside a mosque at his hometown Panjwaee district Taliban are suspected.
US-led coalition forces have killed four Afghan police officers after mistaking them for Taliban rebels on October 18, 2005. Kandahar's governor says the troops opened fire after seeing the officers shoot their weapons into the air. He says the coalition forces were hunting for militants they thought were in the area. A fifth officer was injured in the shooting, and five police fled the area but were later found. The US military has not confirmed the incident and is investigating
On October 20, 2005, the US military has launched a criminal investigation into alleged misconduct by its troops in Afghanistan, including the burning of Taliban corpses. An Australian TV station ran footage of what it says was US soldiers burning the remains of killed Taliban. The act of burning corpses is regarded as a sacrilege in Islam and in breach of the Geneva conventions. Afghan President Hamid Karzai had ordered his own inquiry and would demand appropriate punishment if the claims were proven.
Suspected Taliban rebels detonated a car bomb near a mosque in southern Afghanistan, killing a deputy provincial police chief and one of his bodyguards on Friday October 21, 2005. Nafus Khan, the deputy police chief of Nimroz province, was parking his vehicle next to a mosque in the regional capital, Zaranj, when he was killed by the car bomb. One of his bodyguards was killed and another was injured. An intelligence agent was killed while riding his bicycle home when a roadside bomb exploded in eastern Kunar province. In northern Faryab province late Thursday, gunmen on motorbikes shot to death an Afghan aid worker and wounded three others as they drove to the regional capital, Maymana.
A Taliban ambush in southern Afghan mountains left eight police and four rebels dead on Saturday October 22, 2005. Insurgents hiding behind rocks attacked the police as they were driving slowly on rough roads in Helmand province in search of a rebel hideout.
A deputy police chief of Zurmat district of Paktia, Faiz Mohammad, was killed Monday October 24, 2005, at home when a group of militants crashed into the house in Afghan eastern province of Paktia.
A British soldier has been killed and five others injured during a gunfight in Afghanistan on October 29, 2005. The soldier killed was from the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Light Infantry. The soldiers were travelling between bases in Mazar-e-Sharif when they came under fire, according to a spokesman.
A girls' school has been burned down in Afghanistan, a country where human rights abuses remain a concern four years after the removal of the fundamentalist Taliban government. No one was hurt, but the fire destroyed the building, chairs, a vehicle and tents that were temporarily being used by the students. The primary school, 65 kilometres from Kabul in Logar province, was being renovated when someone set fire to it Saturday October 29, 2005. The school was the fourth to be burned in the same district since the collapse of the hardline Taliban regime.
A US and a British soldier were gunned down in Afghanistan yesterday October 29, 2005, in a deadly series of attacks that claimed 23 lives, including 14 suspected Taliban insurgents. The US soldier was killed on patrol on the border with Pakistan in the east of the country, while the British trooper was shot dead in an ambush in the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Thirteen were shot dead in central Uruzgan province, where the Afghan soldier was killed. A US soldier and an Afghan trooper were wounded but were in stable conditions. US troops killed another militant in eastern Paktika province when he and others were spotted allegedly trying to plant a bomb. Two others were captured and handed to Afghan police. More than 200 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the United States invaded in 2001 to remove the Taliban from power after they failed to hand over their ally Osama bin Laden for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Taliban on Wednesday November 9, 2005, ambushed a police convoy in Afghanistan southern Kandahar province and left seven police dead and two missing. One of the police vehicles had escaped from the scene while two others were destroyed in the ambush and fire exchange. Taliban's spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi accepted responsibility for the bloody attack and said fighters of the former fundamentalist regime eliminated 12 policemen in the ambush. Meanwhile, two Afghan-original Americans who worked as translators for the US military in the troubled Uruzgan province were also kidnapped and beheaded by the militants three days ago.
On November 16, 2005, a suicide bomber drove his car loaded with explosives into a convoy carrying westerners in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Three Afghan civilians were killed and four injured.
An explosion aimed at a military convoy killed one Portuguese peacekeeper and wounded three others in Afghanistan on November 18, 2005.
A roadside bomb killed a US Soldier and an Afghan interpreter in Uruzgan province, Southern Afghanistan, on November 22, 2005. Until now 205 US military personnel killed in the war in Afghanistan.
On November 28, 2005, Afghanistan complained about the lenient punishment -disciplinary action, no criminal charges- against the US soldiers who burned the corpses of two Taliban rebels. Incineration is forbidden in Muslim countries.
Two US helicopters had to make emergency landings in Afghanistan on Sunday December 4, 2005, after being hit by enemy fire. Five US soldiers and one Afghan were wounded. The helicopters were badly damaged.
On December 8, 2005, Nato agreed to send as many as 6,000 more soldiers to Southern Afghanistan. They will be mainly Europeans and Canadians. This will bring the total number of Nato troops in the country to 16,000 and they will be responsible for the security of 75% of the country.
Two policemen have been killed and two others injured in Taliban ambush in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand on December 8, 2005. More than 1,500 people, with a majority of them Taliban militants, have been killed in Taliban-linked militancy this year.
Seven police officers and five Taliban fighters have been killed December 9, 2005, during an assault on government offices in southern Afghanistan. Police said militants armed with machine guns and rockets attacked district offices in Helmand province.
Two US soldiers died in Afghanistan on December 28, 2005. One was killed by a bomb in eastern Afghanistan and two were wounded. In the south of the country, a military armoured vehicle overturned killing one US soldier and hurting four. Until now 208 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan.
On January 4, 2006, militants in Afghanistan beheaded a teacher for adducting girls. The killing was done in front of his wife and 8 children.
On January 16, 2006, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed about 20 spectators of a wrestling match in Sinboldak, a border town in Afghanistan.
A suicide bomber disguised as a woman blew himself up at an army checkpoint in Khost province, eastern Afghanistan, killing five other people and wounding four on Thursday February 2, 2006. The attacker was sitting in the back-seat of the vehicle and detonated explosives hidden under a woman's all-encompassing burka shroud when soldiers asked to see his ID. Three soldiers, the driver of the vehicle and a farmer working nearby were killed along with the bomber. Three soldiers were wounded, as well as a second farmer.
On January 31, 2006, we were told that British and other foreign troops would remain in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2010. A week ago the British Defence Secretary, John Reid, said the British contingent will be increased before the summer from the present total of about 1,000 to 5,700 to try to bring security and stability in all the country. By that time the Afghan army should have 70,000 trained soldiers.
NATO'S expanded mission in Afghanistan was back on track on February 2, 2006, as the Dutch parliament overwhelmingly approved sending 1,400 troops to serve with the British in the south of the country.
The Czech Republic will send a military anti-terrorism unit to Afghanistan we were told on January 4, 2006. The 120-strong unit will be sent to the Afghan mountains within the Enduring Freedom international mission where it will operate along with the US troops. The mission will be similar to that of 2004 when Czechs fulfilled special tasks within the anti-terrorism campaign. The USA has pledged to cover the travelling costs, catering, fuel and other logistic items for the Czech unit. The costs on the Czech side will reach about 132 million crowns, which the military will draw from its reserve fund for 2006.
British soldiers preparing to deploy to lawless southern Afghanistan are "apprehensive" about the threats they will face, their commander, Brigadier Ed Butler, has acknowledged on February 4, 2006. He said the troops of 16 Air Assault Brigade were well trained, equipped and prepared for the task ahead of them and he was confident that they had the capability to "operate freely" in Helmand province. Some 3,300 British troops are to join a Nato mission this summer, following the withdrawal of US units who have been conducting anti-terrorist operations and have come under repeated attack from suicide bombers. The UK troops would not be directly involved in terrorist hunting or anti-narcotics operations, which will be the responsibility of homegrown Afghan forces. The Nato forces will have the job of providing a secure and stable environment for humanitarian reconstruction and the restoration of good governance.
A land mine ripped through a police vehicle, killing six officers and wounding four officials said Sunday February 5, 2006. The mine was buried in a dirt road and detonated as the police drove over it in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. The blast late Saturday in Kandahar province came after 48 hours of bloodshed that left 38 people dead as hundreds of Afghan and U.S. forces battled some 200 militants in the biggest fighting in months.
An American soldier has been killed in an attack in central Afghanistan on February 6, 2006. The soldier was killed when "enemy forces" opened fire on a US patrol in Laghman province. In the east, one suspected rebel fighter was killed and another injured in an exchange with US soldiers.
At least four people have been killed in Afghanistan, as protests continue to spread on February 6, 2006, over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The worst violence occurred outside the US base at Bagram. Police have fired on some 2,000 protesters who tried to break into the heavily guarded main US base in Afghanistan. There's also been violence in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where police have used batons and rifle butts to break up a crowd of 200 protesters in front of the presidential palace.
On February 7, 2006, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed at least 13 people and wounded 13 others. The suicide attack in Kandahar demolished a guard post outside the city's heavily guarded police headquarters. Seven of those killed were police and the rest were civilians. A roadside bomb killed a Turkish engineer.
Hundreds of Shiite and Sunni Muslims clashed in a western Afghan city Thursday February 9, 2006, during the Shiite festival, burning cars, mosques and leaving at least 40 people wounded. The violence started in a camp for displaced people in Herat, near the Iranian border, and then spread across the city. Gunmen set fire to two mosques
On February 10, 2006, at least six Afghan soldiers were killed and many others injured when two bombs exploded along a road in the Afghan province of Kunar, which lies on the border with Pakistan. The first bomb hit a vehicle carrying the soldiers. The second bomb then targeted a second vehicle, which travelled to provide support to the first group of soldiers. It is not known who carried out the attack but the Taliban and other militants are known to operate in Kunar.
The first group of the British combat troop reinforcement left for Afghanistan on Monday February 13, 2006, as part of a NATO expanded presence there. The 150 men from 42 Commando Royal Marines will protect army and Royal Air Force engineers due in southern Helmand province, where remnants of the ousted Taliban regime and drug traffickers are active. Last month UK defence Secretary John Reid said the deployment of 4,600 additional troops to Afghanistan, including 3,300 for a special force tasked with reconstruction and fighting the drug trade in Helmand province. Following a brief peak of 5,700 British troops in July, the numbers were then expected to stabilize at about 4,700 after the withdrawal of engineers and some other forces. Some 1,100 British troops are already in Afghanistan. The new contingent will form part of a three-year expansion of the NATO force to some 18,500 troops, including 9,000 in the south, with commitments from the United States, Canada, Romania and Estonia.
Four American soldiers were killed on February 13, 2006, when their Humvee was hit in a remote-controlled roadside explosion as they were patrolling with an Afghan army unit in the southern province of Uruzgan. Shortly after the explosion, the patrol came under attack from three small dwellings above the road that winds through a valley. A group of insurgents fired down on the convoy with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, destroying another vehicle and forcing the convoy to call in air support including B-52 bombers, and Apaches helicopters. The three homes were destroyed. Two Afghan militia soldiers were killed and six were still missing after another attack in Helmand the day before. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for that attack. Five Afghan army soldiers were also wounded when an explosion hit their vehicle as they were driving in Kunar Province, in eastern Afghanistan.
Two rockets were fired on Thursday October 7, 2004, near a base used by troops of the NATO-led international security force in Afghanistan. The attack was directed at Camp Activia in the capital, the base for the 850-strong Italian contingent, but the rockets missed the camp. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damages.
On January 5, 2006, a suicide bomber detonated his bomb in a crowded market in Tirin Kot, Afghanistan, killing 10 Afghans and wounding 5. The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neuann, was meeting with local leaders nearby. He was not hurt.
Two Italian aid workers in Afghanistan were found dead in their Kabul apartment on February 16, 2006. The cause of their death remains a mystery. Lendi Iannelli and Stefano Siringo were found lifeless in their beds in the guesthouse of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO. Their bodies showed no signs of violence and at first investigators thought they might have died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater but the heater in the room was electric. They appear to have been poisoned.
Three Afghan police were killed Saturday February 18, 2006, as Taliban operatives raided their post in southern Helmand province. The Taliban militants escaped.
As of February 19, 2006, at least 215 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, 129 were killed by hostile action. Outside the Afghan region, the Defence Department reports 56 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, two are the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen. There was also one military civilian death and four CIA officer deaths.
Taliban rebels killed a French soldier in a clash in southern Afghanistan on Saturday March 4, 2006, and a roadside bomb killed an Afghan intelligence agent and four other Afghans. A Canadian soldier from the US-led foreign force was also seriously wounded in a clash in the Shahwali Kot district of Kandahar. At least one Taliban guerrilla was killed in that clash and two were killed in the one in which the French soldier died, elsewhere in the province of Kandahar.
If the Parliament agrees, Spain is to send 200 more soldiers to Afghanistan in the light of what is seen as the deteriorating situation in the country. The current number of Spaniards serving there to 740. The object of the increased numbers is to better protect the Spanish contingent, and to speed up reconstruction work in the province of Badghis.
Several bomb explosions shook different provinces of Afghanistan on Sunday
March 12, 2006, claiming lives of 11 persons including four US soldiers.
These explosions happened on the same day with the visit of US ambassador
to the province.
- On Sunday morning, a bloody suicide bomb attack against Chairman of the
Upper House Mujaddadi in the capital Kabul claimed four persons' lives including
the attacker, and injured three others. The chairman was slightly injured
in his hands.
- Two bombs exploded in the southern Helmand province.
- An explosion in Khannishin district claimed lives of two civilians and
injured another one.
- In another bomb explosion in the central Ghazni province Sunday targeting
the Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers, the vehicle of ANA was damaged,
but no casualty among the soldiers.
- Four US soldiers were killed after a blast ripped through their armoured
vehicle, the single biggest recent loss in a day for the American military.
The incident happened while the soldiers were on a patrol in the eastern
province of Kunar. Sunday's attack brings to 10 the number of losses for
US soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year.
Five Afghan police were killed and six others injured as suspected Taliban militants raided a check post in the southern Kandahar province on Monday March 13, 2006. Two dead bodies of the militants were lying at the site of the battle, which continued for three hours.
Swedish Troops took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from their British counterparts in Northern Afghanistan on March 18, 2006. ISAF Commander in Afghanistan, Col. Sam Stron, pledged to give top priority to collect illegal arms for controlling law and order. He hoped that the people would welcome the disarmament drive because some armed groups were creating problems for the masses. Col. Sam told the Swedish troops that their duty would be hard due to many security related problems. The Swedish forces would take charge of Provincial Reconstruction Commission work in Balkh, Jauzjan, Sar-e-Pul and Samangan provinces. They will also work for the disarmament process.
On March 18, 2006, authorities in Afghanistan confirmed they had found the bodies of four foreign workers who had been recently kidnapped in the country's south. The bodies were discovered hidden under brush and sticks in a valley in the Maiwand district. A roadside bomb hit the police convoy that was bringing back the bodies, killing five people. At least three of the foreign workers are believed to be ethnic Albanians from Macedonia. All four were employed by a German contractor working for US and Afghan troops. A Taliban spokesman on March 13 claimed responsibility for the abductions and said the ousted religious militia had shot them.
A roadside bomb killed five police officers in Friday March 17, 2006 as they travelled in a convoy transporting the four bodies of Macedonian working for a German firm kidnapped in southern Afghanistan a week ago. The attack occurred in the Maywand district of Kandahar.
Afghan police in Afghan southern province of Kandahar bordering with Pakistan killed fifteen Taliban militants Tuesday March 21, 2006. According to local source, the people killed were not militants, but a big group of gang. But the provincial governor and the commander of ANA (Afghan National Army) declined to confirm the news. The provincial governor of northern province of Faryab survived a life attempt when unknown culprits opened fire at his car.
A British soldier has died while serving in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence announced on March 24, 2006. Corporal Mark Cridge died on March 22 in Camp Bastion, near Lashka Gar in the southern province of Helmand. A MoD spokesman said that initial inquiries did not indicate the death was caused by hostile action, but declined to comment further while investigations are under way. It is thought that investigators are not linking anyone else with the death.
A US soldier was killed and another was wounded on March 26, 2006, in a
clash with militants that left seven Taliban fighters dead in southern Afghanistan.
US and Afghan forces exchanged fire with 20 militants in Helmand province,
before calling in aerial support that resulted in the dropping of 11 guided-bombs.
An Afghan soldier was also wounded. A spokesman for the Taliban, Yousuf
Ahmadi, said by telephone that the movement's fighters had been involved
in the battle in Sangin district, confirming that one of its men had been
wounded in the clash.
As of March 27, 2006, at least 221 members of the US military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defence Department. Of those 138 were killed by hostile actions. Outside the Afghan region, the Defence Department reports 56 more members of the US military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, two are the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen. There was also one military civilian death and four CIA officer deaths.
A British soldier has been killed in a road accident in the provincial capital, Laskar Gah, in southern Afghanistan on March 27, 2006.
A roadside bomb has killed three Afghans and two foreigners in the country's south. The victims worked for an American security company (USPI) and were killed on the road linking Kandahar with Herat. The nationalities of the two foreigners are not clear. The Taliban are being blamed for the attack. In a separate incident, a suicide bomber blew up himself and his accomplice in the centre of Kandahar city Tuesday. There were no other casualties.
Afghanistan, March 29, 2006:
- At least one foreign national and nine Afghans have been killed in two
separate suicide bomb attacks linked to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan's
restive south.
- In the first of the attacks, a roadside bomb exploded killed a group of
security contractors working for United States Protection and Investigations
on the main road linking southern Kandahar city with Herat in western Afghanistan.
Namibian security coordinator Dieter Frost was killed in the attack, along
with Afghan employees Tory Alai, Abdul Raouf and Akhtar Mohammed.
- Hours later, six Afghan soldiers were killed when an army vehicle was
attacked on a road about 200 kilometres northwest of Kandahar.
- In a third incident, two suicide attackers blew themselves up in Kandahar
when challenged by police up but hurt no one else. The suspected Taliban
militants strapped explosives to their bodies and were stopped while walking
on a main street in the city.
- Meanwhile just over the Afghanistan border in Pakistan's northwestern
frontier bitter tribal fighting killed at least 24 people.
A roadside bomb wounded five US troops when it hit their vehicle in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday April 1, 2006, while a suicide attack on a US-led coalition convoy in the country's south killed the bomber but hurt no one else. The insurgents opened fire at the troops after the roadside bombing in mountainous Kunar province. The wounded service members were airlifted for treatment to Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan.
A key provincial lawmaker has been shot dead in northeast Afghanistan on April 1, 2006. Sayed Sadiq was killed by unidentified gunmen at his home in Takhar province. He became speaker of the provincial assembly after elections in October. Mr Sadiq was a supporter of President Hamid Karzai and a strong critic of the drugs trade; he is the first lawmaker killed since parliament's inauguration.
Suspected Taliban militants shot dead five policemen and wounded three others in southern Afghanistan on April 2, 2006. The policemen were attacked by four gunmen on two motorcycles in Charbagh, a southwestern residential neighbourhood of Kandahar. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammed Youssef, telephoned The Associated Press to claim responsibility for the attack.
Suspected Taliban fighters have killed a Turkish engineer in western Afghanistan on April 5, 2006, while a policeman and a fighter were killed in a shootout in the south.
Unidentified gunmen killed the speaker of the provincial parliament in Afghanistan's northeastern Takhar province on Saturday April 1, 2006. Gunmen broke into the house of Sayed Sadeq in Khoja Ghar district, 65 km north of the provincial capital, Taloqan, and shot him on the spot.
Gunmen, suspected Taliban fighters, opened fire on Mohammad Tahir, intelligence director of Delarum district of southwestern Nimroz province, as he was in a car travelling to his office on April 5, 2006. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack. In a separate incident, police in southern Helmand province killed four suspected Taliban who had planted land mines intended for about 300 security forces on a drugs eradication mission. Local residents had informed police that militants had prepared an ambush for the force in Nawzad district.
Three Americans, two US service members and one US civilian contractor, were injured Friday April 7, 2006, in a suicide car bomb in Afghan southern province of Helmand outside the main gates of the Lashkar Gah Provincial Reconstruction Team compound. The US denied the former report about the involvement of British soldiers.
One Afghan civilian was killed and four German soldiers were injured during two separate attacks in northern Afghanistan, on April 5, 2006. The attacks took place in Faizabad and near Kunduz.
Two bombs went off in a coordinated attack in the Afghan city of Kandahar on Sunday April 9, 2006, and 17 people were wounded in the latest incident in a wave of militant violence. Three soldiers and three policemen had been wounded, as well as some civilians. A hospital official said five wounded civilians had been brought in, including two children.
Five medical staff working for a Christian Aid-funded organisation have been murdered in northwest Afghanistan on April 11, 2006. The victims include a doctor, community health worker, and health educator who were part of a project run by the Rural Rehabilitation Association for Afghanistan (RRAA), in Darrah-i-Bohm, Badghis province. It is thought that at least four gunmen broke into their clinic. According to reports, the gunmen tied them up before shooting them.
Three British soldiers have been injured in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on April 10, 2006. Two were seriously injured in the blast, which happened on Monday in the Helmand Province, the third was "walking wounded". They were treated at a military medical facility after being airlifted.
At least six children were killed and 15 injured on Tuesday April 11, 2006, when a rocket hit a school in an eastern Kunar Afghanistan province. Local police confirmed the incident and said two more rockets had landed in the area.
Two British soldiers have suffered minor injuries in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said on April 14, 2006. The soldiers and a local person were hurt in an incident in Lashka Gar, the Helmand provincial capital, in the south of the country. A suicide car bomber drove into a military convoy. Four soldiers were injured in an incident involving an explosion in Shaibah, in southern Iraq. This incident happened near the Shaibah logistics base, just outside Basra.
Six suspected Taliban militias were killed on Wednesday April 12, 2006, as the US-led coalition forces launched new offensive in the eastern Kunar province. The operation is taking place just day after a rocket strike on a primary school and killing seven pupils in the area where hundreds of supporters of ousted Taliban regime and former Prime Minister Gulbudin Hekmatyar are said to have holed up. Dubbed, as "Mountain Lion" the new operation, according to the statement is part of the coalition forces ongoing offensive to deny sanctuary and root out the insurgents from the area.
As of April 14, 2006, at least 223 members of the US military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001; 140 were killed by hostile action. Outside the Afghan region, the Defence Department reports 56 more members of the US military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, two are the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen. There was also one military civilian death and four CIA officer deaths.
Taliban militias gunned down a district chief in the southern Helmand province on Saturday April 15, 2006.
On April 20, 2006, we were told that Netherlands is to send an extra 200 troops to Afghanistan due to the worsening security situation in the south of the country. The Dutch government agreed in February to deploy 1,200-1,400 soldiers to help reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan after months of tortured debate within parliament and the ruling centre-right coalition.
Six policemen have been killed by suspected Taliban insurgents who attacked the police post in the Maiwand district in the early hours of Friday April 21, 2006, in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. The bodies of four of the six policemen killed in Kandahar were burned. Two burned bodies were found on the roof of the building, and another two burned bodies were found inside. Two other policemen appear to have been shot outside the building before the militants ran off. In a separate incident, a US soldier was killed and an Afghan soldier wounded when their patrol came under attack in central Uruzghan province. The attack in which the US soldier died occurred while the soldiers were investigating a weapons cache in Dihrawud district, Uruzghan province.
Afghanistan, April 25, 2006:
- A roadside bomb, a Taliban assault on a police station, and an air strike
by US-led forces in Afghanistan has killed at least 13 people.
- Four Afghan soldiers died in a roadside bomb blast as they took part in
a joint operation with US forces against insurgents in Kunar province.
- Two rockets hit central Kabul, injuring three people. There was no claim
of responsibility.
- A day earlier, an airstrike by US-led forces in the Lashkar Gah district
of Helmand province killed three suspected Taliban.
In another clash, five rebels and one policeman were killed in a gun battle
when Taliban insurgents attacked a police checkpoint in Kandahar province.
Afghan troops killed two Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand during clashes on Saturday April 29, 2006.
Three Afghan policemen were killed and another injured on April 30, 2006 after a rocket hit their patrol in Bughran district of the province, Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand.
A contingent of British forces has taken over security duties on May 1, 2006 in the dangerous Afghan province of Helmand replacing US forces. Hundreds of British troops are already in Helmand and the full complement will eventually number more than 3,000. Control was transferred in a ceremony at a base in the province capital, Lashkar Gah, where a union flag replaced the US flag flying over the site.
Afghanistan, May 1, 2006:
- Two suicide bomb attacks were reported on Monday.
- In one blast near a US-led coalition convoy in the town of Tirin Kot in
southern Uruzgan province, the attacker was killed, a civilian and a foreign
soldier were wounded.
- In eastern Khost province, a man died when explosives strapped to his
body went off prematurely.
- Two other would-be suicide bombers were hurt but escaped in the incident
west of Khost city.
Troops from the US-led coalition have killed between 15 and 20 Taliban insurgents in the southern Afghan province of Helmand we were told on Monday May 1, 2006. Separately, a coalition solider and one civilian were wounded Monday when a suicide attacker rammed his explosives laden car into a military convoy in neighbouring Uruzgan province. The coalition forces were on a routine patrol in the provincial capital Tirin Kot when a Toyota approached the convoy and exploded, killing the attacker and destroying his vehicle. In the southeastern province of Khost a suicide bomber who planned to target an anniversary ceremony was killed in a premature blast and an accomplice was wounded early Monday. Two soldiers from the coalition forces were wounded on Monday when a bomb ripped through their vehicle in Kandahar. Suspected Taliban militants set a girls' school on fire in eastern Afghanistan on Monday.
A French army engineer contingent of the International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) was killed while two Canadian soldiers were injured in the
latest Afghan violence on Monday May 15, 2006. The 670-strong French contingent
has been in Kabul since December 2001, primarily situated to the north of
Kabul city and the Shamali plain.
Also on Monday May 15, 2006, two Canadian soldiers were injured in a bomb
explosion in the restive province of Kandahar. Since 2002, 15 Canadian soldiers
and one Canadian diplomat have been killed in the war-torn country.
Afghanistan, Tuesday May 16, 2006:
- Militants attacked a police post and a government office, and a gun battle
later broke out in Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan in Khost province
on Tuesday, killing four people and injuring 13.
- The US-led coalition said an air strike on a suspected enemy camp in Uruzgan
province in south-central Afghanistan on Monday killed at least four militants.
- In a neighbouring district, a gun battle broke out between militants and
police. Eight police and one civilian were injured.
- In northern Afghanistan, militants burned down two rooms of a school early
Wednesday. No one was at the school during the incident and no one was injured.
On May 18, 2006, we were told the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has lost 60 of its personnel in Afghanistan since its deployment in the post-Taliban nation nearly five years ago, 24 of them have lost their lives in combat-related activities. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has decided to increase its strength from some 10,000 at present to 15,000 by summer this year to effectively help the Afghan government stabilize security particularly in the volatile southern region. The casualties on the 23,000-strong US-led coalition troops have reached over 234 since the Operation Enduring Freedom was launched in October 2001.
A Canadian woman soldier was killed in the Panjwai district, about 17 miles west of Kandahar in a clash in Afghanistan on Wednesday May 17, 2006. Captain Nichola Goddard was killed while trying to clear Taliban from an area in the southern province of Kandahar in an operation with Afghan government troops. Goddard was the 16th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan. A Canadian diplomat was killed in a car-bomb blast in Kandahar in January. Canada has about 2,300 troops in Afghanistan, almost all in Kandahar.
In Kandahar province, Afghan and Canadian forces on a mission to expel Taliban fighters came under fire from militants late Wednesday May 17, 2006. Hours later, in the neighbouring province Helmand, between 300 to 400 Taliban fighters armed with machine-gun and assault rifles stormed a remote southern Afghan village. Thursday brought more fighting and two suicide car bombs, adding up to one of the deadliest episodes of violence in Afghanistan. An apparently suicide bomb attack left one American trooper dead and injured five others in Western Afghanistan Thursday morning. At least 100 people were killed: dozens of insurgents, at least 15 Afghan police and the first female Canadian soldier to die in combat.
Five Afghan policemen and eight-armed Taliban were killed in two separate incidents in Afghanistan's southern province of Ghazni on Friday May 19, 2006. Taliban late Thursday afternoon ambushed three vehicles in Nanai district of the province and killed three policemen. Another clash broke between the Taliban and Afghan police in Waghaz district of the province and resulted the killing of eight Taliban and two police. Nine other policemen were injured and one Taliban fighter was also arrested. In the past three days, at least 95 people, including a Canadian, an American, several Afghan police and dozens of Taliban have been killed in fierce fighting in the southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand and Ghazni.
Afghanistan Saturday May 20, 2006:
- Militants hiding in a vineyard and armed with machine guns ambushed an
Afghan army convoy, shooting dead four soldiers but losing 15 of their own.
- Violence elsewhere killed another 15 people -including two French troops
and a US soldier.
- Militants ambushed another Afghan army convoy in southern Zabul province
and four rebels were killed as the troops returned fire.
- The US soldier was killed Friday in Uruzgan province, also in the south.
Six soldiers were wounded.
- At least 235 members of the US military have died in and around Afghanistan
as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
- In the western city of Herat, an explosion hit a vehicle carrying a former
warlord, Amanullah Khan, wounding him and two others.
A car bomb targeting a convoy of coalition troops killed three people in
Kabul on Sunday May 21, 2006, while one French and three Afghan soldiers
were killed and about 27 other troops wounded in fighting in southern Afghanistan.
The country's foreign minister, meanwhile, claimed that Taliban leaders
are living in Pakistan and coordinating terrorist strikes in Afghanistan
from there.
At least 16 civilians and up to 60 Taliban fighters have been killed after US-led coalition forces launched a raid in southern Afghanistan on Sunday May 21, 2006. 15 civilians were wounded in the air strikes, which took place in Kandahar's Panjwayi district. Another report says 30 civilians were killed and 50 injured. Coalition warplanes are said to have dropped bombs on an Islamic religious school or Madrassa and homes in which Taliban fighters had taken up position. Eyewitnesses and local doctors say children were among those injured. One said Taliban fighters had taken control of his house to launch missile attacks from the roof, and that many of his family members had died in the bombing raid. A suicide car bomber struck near a US military base, killing at least two people, and a US soldier was reported killed in fighting with insurgents in southern Afghanistan. A car accident apparently prevented the suicide bomber from reaching his intended target, believed to be a store frequented by foreigners on the outskirts of Kabul.
US-led forces in Afghanistan killed more than 60 Taliban fighters and 16
civilians in attacks on their strongholds in the south on Monday May 22,
2006. The civilians were killed in air strikes after Taliban took positions
in their homes in Panjwai district of Kandahar.
On Tuesday May 23, 2006, Taliban guerrillas have ambushed a police convoy
in southern Afghanistan, killing three officers. At least 11 Taliban insurgents
were also killed during the ambush and subsequent fighting in Helmand province.
In Kabul, a roadside bomb killed four healthcare workers employed by the
Afghan Health Development Service. A doctor, a male and a female nurse and
their driver were killed Monday as they were travelling in Wardak province,
about 50 kilometres west of the capital.
Sixty suspected Taliban and five members of the Afghan security forces were killed in a major new clash in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday May 23, 2006.
A British military C-130 cargo aircraft caught fire while landing at an airstrip in southern Afghanistan, but all aboard escaped unhurt on May 24, 2006. One of the plane's tires burst when it hit the ground, sending debris into an engine, which then caught fire. The incident was not the result of militant fire. British ambassador Stephen Evans was on the plane but was unhurt.
Afghanistan, Wednesday May 24, 2006:
- Unknown militants set on fire three US base-bound trucks and killed their
drivers in the southeast Paktika province.
- Fighting in southern Afghan mountains killed at least 24 militants and
five Afghan forces.
- Five Canadian soldiers are in stable condition after being wounded in
a roadside bombing. An Afghan translator was also injured in the attack.
At least seven people have been killed in the Afghan capital Kabul on May 28, 2006, after a traffic accident involving a US military convoy sparked mass rioting. Hundreds of anti-US protesters clashed with Afghan security forces for more than two hours in the worst rioting since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The protesters moved on to attack buildings in the diplomatic quarter. There are conflicting reports over whether the US troops in the military convoy fired into the crowd. The unrest began after a US military vehicle apparently lost control and smashed into at least 12 other civilian vehicles during rush hour in Kabul's northern suburbs. Some eyewitnesses said they saw the soldiers shoot at protesters, while others say it was the Afghan police who came to the aid of the under-siege convoy. Some say it was both.
At least eight people -but some say 25- were killed and more than 100 injured after a deadly traffic accident involving US troops sparked a demonstration in the Afghan capital Kabul, on Monday May 29, 2006. The incident began when a US military convoy hit several civilian cars in rush-hour traffic as it entered the city from the northern outskirts. The crash aggravated the worst riot in Kabul since the fall of hard-line Taliban. Some eyewitnesses said that the casualties occurred when US and Afghan security forces opened fire on the demonstrators.
Around 50 Taliban fighters were killed in a US-led air strike in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on May 29, 2006. Several Taliban leaders were among those killed in the pre-dawn attack in the Kajaki district.
Seven aid workers lost their lives in Afghanistan on Tuesday May 30, 2006, in two separate incidents. At least four were killed in the northern Afghan province of Jawzjan when unidentified gunmen ambushed their vehicle. The Afghan aid workers - three women and one man from Action Aid International -were murdered when they were driving to the provincial capital of Sheberghan.
Anti-government militants took over the control of Chori district in southern Uruzgan province Tuesday night May 30, 2006, but evacuated Wednesday morning after setting on fire the district building.
A U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday May 31, 2006 that American soldiers used their guns in self-defence after rioting Afghans opened fire during a melee that broke out after a deadly road crash.
On June 1, 2006, four and a half years after being deployed in Afghanistan, the German army or Bundeswehr took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the northern half of the country. The new responsibility has come at a time when violence has risen in Afghanistan, highlighted this week by unrest in Kabul and the killing of aid workers in the north.
At least 12 suspected Taliban rebels are dead after attacking a police station in southern Afghanistan on June 2, 2006. Fighters hit a police compound in northern Kandahar province with automatic rifle and machine gun fire around sundown on Friday, setting off hours of deadly fighting. The police repulsed the attack and the militants took away their dead and wounded as the retreated. Four policemen are among 17 others wounded in the attack.
Terrorists have killed three Coalition soldiers, and wounded four more in Afghanistan on June 6, 2006. Among them, two US soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar province. A third soldier and an Afghan interpreter were also wounded.
U.S.-led coalition forces have killed 22 insurgents in a series of raids in southern and eastern Afghanistan we were told on Tuesday June 6, 2006. Thirteen guerrillas were killed in a clash in the southern province of Uruzgan where two coalition soldiers received non-life threatening wounds. In neighbouring Helmand, five militants were killed in an operation by coalition forces while four more insurgents were killed in Zabul and Paktika provinces.
Twenty-one Taliban fighters have been killed in a clash with British soldiers in the village of Nowzad in southern Afghanistan on June 9, 2006. In other fighting, the Afghan army says it killed 13 militants in the central province of Uruzgan.
Four Pakistani nationals of a construction company building a road in southern Afghanistan were found shot dead on Sunday June 11. 2006, in Helmand province. The deceased were on their way home from their workplace when some armed men stopped their vehicle and sprayed bullets killing all four on the spot.
A British soldier was killed and another was seriously injured after an engagement with Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan on Sunday June 11, 2006. A mobile patrol was engaged in a firefight against suspected Taliban forces, which resulted in the death and serious injury. The injured soldier was taken by helicopter to a medical facility at Camp Bastion. The fatality is the first suffered by British troops since their deployment to the restive Helmand province in recent months. Britain has about 3,000 troops deployed across southern Afghanistan, including Helmand province, as part of a NATO-led peacekeeping force.
Suspected Taliban militants in their attacks against government interests abducted and killed a local judge in the southern Ghazni province Wednesday June14, 2006.
Ten people were killed and 15 wounded on June 14, 2006, when a bomb exploded on a minibus carrying civilian workers to Kandahar airport. The bomb was on the minibus and exploded after it was hit by another vehicle.
Afghan and coalition troops, pushing ahead with their largest offensive
since the ousting of the Taliban, have killed about 85 suspected insurgents
in targeted attacks over the past few days in southern Afghanistan we were
told on June 17, 2006. About 10,000 US-led troops have spread out over four
southern provinces as part of Operation Mountain Thrust, a counter-insurgency
blitz aimed at quelling a Taliban resurgence.
Two Taliban ambushes of civilian convoys left 30 people dead on Monday June 19, 2006, as coalition and Afghan forces killed at least 11 militants in an ongoing US-led offensive across southern Afghanistan. Seven Taliban militants were also killed and four injured in southern Uruzgan province the same day.
US-led coalition troops in Afghanistan have killed five Islamist militants, it was announced Tuesday June 20, 2006. A suspected Taliban leader was among the dead. US-led coalition forces in the southern Afghanistan provinces of Uruzgan and Paktia are engaged in 'Operation Mountain Thrust', the largest offensive against Taliban fighters since the fall of the hardline regime in 2001. Meanwhile in the neighbouring province of Kandahar one coalition soldier was killed and four wounded in a bomb attack. They are thought to be Romanians.
On June 20, 2006, Taliban militants killed 32 friends and relatives of an influential lawmaker in southern Afghanistan and 10 others are missing. MP Dad Mohammad Khan said that 27 of the men had been killed in Helmand province when they had gone to the scene of an earlier attack in which five others were shot dead.
A bomb fixed to a tanker supplying fuel to US forces in Afghanistan exploded on June 20, 2006, as the vehicle crossed over from Pakistan at the Torkham border post, killing six people and destroying 10 trucks. The blast set alight a fuel tanker behind it and the fire spread to eight other trucks, including road construction vehicles and cargo lorries. Six drivers and personnel in the trucks were killed and 10 trucks were burned after a bomb explosion in a fuel truck.
Four US soldiers have been killed and one wounded in clashes with Taliban insurgents in the eastern province of Nuristan in Afghanistan on Wednesday June 21, 2006.
Police have recovered four decapitated bodies in southern Afghanistan on Friday June 22, 2006. The decapitated bodies, all of them in civil clothes, were recovered in the Shah Joy district of Zabul province. The headless corpses were dumped at two separate locations in uninhabited areas.
On Saturday June 24, 2006, US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan say they have killed at least 65 Taliban militants in recent offensives in the south. Coalition and Afghan forces attacked a large group of militants and fought a three-hour battle in Zharie district in Kandahar province on Friday. Troops fought a five-hour battle on the same day with Taliban fighters in neighbouring Uruzgan province.
Five Afghan aid workers have been abducted in the eastern province of Nuristan
on June 25, 2006. They include three people employed by the aid agency,
Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, and two local government workers. Village
elders are in contact with the were from the Mehsood tribe and belonged
to Ladha, Makin, Sarogha, Tiarza and other tribal areas kidnappers, the
Taliban, and say the five are still alive.
We were told on June26, 2006, twenty-two Pakistani from the Mehsood tribe
of the Ladha, Makin, Sarogha, Tiarza and other tribal areas from South Waziristan
have been killed in Paktia and Paktika provinces in the current offensive
by US-led forces and the Afghan security forces. Pakistan officially denies
the involvement of its nationals in Afghanistan, but has blamed the role
of "a few individuals" for the border between the two countries
being poorly guarded on the Afghanistan side.
Two British soldiers have been killed in fighting with Taliban forces in
Afghanistan on June 27, 2006. The troops were on night patrol in Sangin,
in the southern province of Helmand, when Taliban militia attacked them.
A rocket-propelled grenade destroyed a vehicle. Two soldiers died in the
fighting and one was seriously hurt. One of men was serving with the Special
Boat Service (SBS), the sister regiment to the SAS, which draws its membership
from the Royal Marines. The other is understood to have been a member of
a recently formed Special Forces support group.
Separate security incidents and fire fight left three persons including a foreign soldier and two suspected Taliban operatives dead on Wednesday June 28, 2006. Three coalition soldiers were injured and one of them succumbed to his injuries as their vehicle ran over a mine in Musa Qala district of Helmand. A gun battle between militants and Afghan police in the Nad Ali district resulted to the dead of two militants and injuring one police. One wounded rebel was arrested from the battleground.
US- led coalition forces in Afghanistan killed 14 militants Friday June 30, 2006, in an attack on a hideout in Nuristan province in eastern part of the country. In a separate incident, Afghan and coalition forces raided a village in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. They killed one suspected militant and captured eight others.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government agreed on Friday June 30, 2006, to keep Italian troops in Afghanistan despite opposition from pacifists in his coalition threatening to vote against the mission in parliament. The cabinet unanimously adopted a decree that extends financing for Italy's overseas military operations, including for its some 1,300 troops on a NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.
As of July 1, 2006, at least 251 members of the US military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, 153 were killed by hostile action.
Outside Afghanistan, 56 more members of the US military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, two are the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen. There was also one military civilian death and four CIA officer deaths.
Two British soldiers have been killed on July 1, 2006, in southern Afghanistan during operations in Helmand province. A rocket-propelled grenade struck one of the defensive posts at the regional headquarters in the town of Sangin. Five British soldiers have now been killed in the country in the last three weeks. Most of the 3,300 British troops in Afghanistan are in Helmand.
An AH-64 Apache attack US helicopter crashed Sunday July 2, 2006, in southern Afghanistan, killing one crewmember. It plunged to the ground shortly after taking off from Kandahar Air Field. One crewmember was killed, while the other was injured and evacuated for emergency treatment.
Two British soldiers killed in Afghanistan have been named on July 3, 2006.
They are Corporal Thorpe, 27, of the Royal Signals and Lance Corporal Hashmi,
24, a Muslim, of the Intelligence Corps, attached to the Royal Signals.
Another British soldier was killed in the Afghan province of Helmand on
July 5, 2006 when his patrol was attacked by Taliban insurgents who ambushed
his patrol as it drove through Sangin, the administrative headquarters in
the north of the province. The soldier, who has not been named, was serving
with the 3 Para Battle Group. He is the sixth fatality since British forces
began operational duties last month. The patrol responded to the Taliban
attack with "measured force" and the battle lasted more than an
hour. Apache helicopters were called on for air support.
Five Afghan men working at a US military base were shot and killed by suspected Taliban militants on July 5, 2006. Another worker was injured in the attack, which took place in the Korangal area of Kunar province in Afghanistan. The victims were driving home from work when the militants stopped the vehicle and open fired. In a separate incident, two explosions killed at least seven people in Kabul, the country's capital.
A US-led coalition soldier and 10 suspected Taliban militants died on Thursday July 6, 2006. In eastern Afghanistan, militants opened fire on a coalition patrol in Paktika's Gayan district, killing one soldier. A 10-year old girl was also wounded in the firefight, and was in stable condition after surgery.
The soldier killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday July 5, 2006, has been named by the MoD as Private Damien Raymond Jackson from South Shields in Tyne and Wear.
A roadside bomb killed a Peruvian soldier and wounded four other NATO troops patrolling western Afghanistan on Sunday July 9, 2006. The Spanish Defence Ministry said the slain soldier was from Peru and had been serving with Spanish forces under an agreement allowing Peruvians with Spanish ancestry to form part of its forces.
Britain announced on July 10, 2006, it will send nearly 900 more troops to troubled southern Afghanistan, following a month that has seen six British soldiers killed in clashes with Taliban fighters. The government says the additional troops will increase the British force in southern Afghanistan to about 4,500 soldiers to confront a growing Taliban threat. Britain is spearheading a NATO mission in Helmand province, a region on the border with Pakistan, known for its opium poppy production and lawlessness.
Coalition and Afghan forces hunting a Taliban commander raided a militant sanctuary July 12, 2006, killing an estimated 30 fighters before blowing up a helicopter damaged in an emergency landing. Victims of another attack in Uruzgan's provincial capital of Tirin Kot that killed 40 militants a day earlier said civilians, including children, were among the dead and wounded. The US military said it had no information on any civilian casualties.
British forces in Afghanistan have defended their decision to call in US
planes to drop 500lb bombs on Taliban fighters in a town in Helmand province
on July 14, 2006. Witnesses say there were many civilian deaths and injuries
but UK forces said there was no evidence of any; aircraft dropped at least
three bombs, destroying shops and a school. Much of the town's market of
150 shops has been reduced to rubble and there are deep craters where the
bombs struck. The newly built two-storey school received a direct hit, causing
its concrete roof to collapse. British troops said the school was being
used by the Taliban to launch mortars.
British forces in Afghanistan defended on July 15, 2006, their decision to call in US planes to drop at least three 500lb bombs on Taliban fighters in a town in Helmand province. Witnesses say there were many civilian deaths and injuries and they destroyed shops and a school but UK forces said there was no evidence of any. Much of the town's market of 150 shops has been reduced to rubble and there are deep craters where the bombs struck. The newly built two-storey school received a direct hit, causing its concrete roof to collapse. British troops said the school was being used by the Taliban to launch mortars. Another building has reinforced concrete rods jutting out from its crumbling walls in the shape of a bomb blast.
At least 12 people died Monday July 17, 2006, in clashes in Afghanistan, including a high-ranking justice official, four Afghan and coalition soldiers and four suspected fighters with the al-Qaeda terrorist network. A suspected local terrorist leader, Amir Gul Hassanyar, was also detained over the weekend in the northern province of Kunduz, where a large weapons cache was also seized.
Taliban militants have captured two districts' headquarters, Nawa district and the Garmsir district in the southern Helmand province on Tuesday July 18, 2006.
A double suicide attack on Saturday July 22, 2006, killed eight people including two Canadian soldiers in Kandahar. Dozens of others were wounded in the blasts, which started when a suicide car bomber rammed a US-led coalition convoy in the city. As police tried to push back onlookers and deal with the injured, a second bomber blew himself up, killing five Afghans. In addition three Danish soldiers were injured in a mine blast in southern Afghanistan. The mine exploded while the soldiers were moving into an area they were designated to patrol. Afghan forces killed 19 suspected Taliban rebels as they traded rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire today with insurgents in the southern province of Helmand, nine miles south of Lashkar Gah.
The US-led coalition in Afghanistan says all 16 people aboard a helicopter that crashed Wednesday July 23, 2006, in bad weather in southeastern Afghanistan were killed. 12 bodies have been recovered and four are missing. Those on board included a mix of Afghans and foreigners, including two Dutch soldiers serving with the International Security Assistance Force. The cause of the crash of the M.I.-8 helicopter was not immediately clear. A purported Taliban spokesman said the insurgents had shot down the chopper.
On Monday July 31, 2006, Nato forces have formally taken control of military operations in southern Afghanistan from the US-led coalition, which overthrew the Taliban in 2001. The chief of US-led coalition forces symbolically handed over command at a ceremony in a dusty airfield near the southern city of Kandahar. British Lt-Gen David Richards said the new Nato-led force wanted to deliver "peace, stability and prosperity".
Three British soldiers were killed after a vehicle patrol was ambushed by militants in southern Afghanistan have been named by the Ministry of Defence. Capt Alex Eida, 2nd Lt Ralph Johnson and L/Cpl Ross Nicholls were killed on Tuesday August 1, 2006, in Helmand province. A fourth soldier injured in the incident has not yet been named.
A suicide car bomb has exploded in a crowded bazaar in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province on August 3, 2006, killing at least 21 civilians and injuring 13. NATO said one of its convoys was a few hundred metres away when the blast happened in Panjwayi district but was not involved in the blast and it was not clear if it was the intended target. The same day four Canadian soldiers have been killed and 10 injured. This was a day of sustained fighting that saw troops attacked by rocket propelled grenades, machine gun fire and two road side bombs.
A member of the UK armed forces has been killed in the lawless Helmand province in the south of Afghanistan during operations against "insurgent positions" on August 6, 2006. He was Private Andrew Barrie Cutts and he died in Musa Qala.
Eight policemen and 12 Taliban insurgents were killed in a fierce conflict between Afghan police and Taliban militants in Panjwai in the southern Kandahar province on Wednesday August 9, 2006. Some Taliban militants ambushed a group of policemen in Panjwai district; 7 policemen and 9 Taliban were also wounded. Also in Kandahar province, a soldier of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) died in a weapons accident. A British soldier killed in a road accident in Kabul has been named as Leigh Reeves.
Three American soldiers and a NATO soldier were killed on August 11, 2006, in two separate attacks. The three Americans were killed in an attack by insurgents in the far northeast of Afghanistan. Another two American soldiers were wounded. The NATO soldier was killed in a bomb attack in the southern province of Kandahar. The nationality of the NATO soldier was not yet revealed.
Until August 11, 2006, twenty-six Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed since the Canadian military deployed to Afghanistan in early 2002.
A British soldier has been accidentally killed On August 11, 2006, in one of the UK's military bases in Afghanistan. The soldier was servicing a vehicle at the time of his death. He is the 12th member of British armed forces to die in the last two months.
5.3.1 Still more military actions
At least 17 people, including a doctor and nurses, who were abducted at
gunpoint Thursday in southern Kandahar province by gunmen forcing a bus
off a road have been freed unharmed on Friday August 18, 2006. The bus carrying
a doctor and five nurses among its passengers was en route to a refugee
camp in Kandahar when it was stopped.
At least 74 Taliban militants, 4 US soldiers, and 10 Afghan policemen were killed in the fresh weekend violence we were told on Monday August 21, 2006. 70 Taliban insurgents were killed in Panjwai district of the southern Kandahar province. The battle also killed four policemen and one Afghan soldier. Three policemen and three Afghan soldiers were injured in the conflict.
Insurgents killed four U S soldiers and wounded three others in separate clashes on August 20, 2006 as Afghanistan celebrated its independence day. Three U S soldiers were killed and three others wounded during combat operations in Pech district of the eastern Kunar province. A separate attack in southern Uruzgan Province killed one U S soldier and one Afghan soldier yesterday.
A British soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed and three others were wounded in a firefight with suspected Taliban guerrillas in the southern province of Helmand. The latest British soldier killed in action was named as Corporal Bryan Budd, the Ministry of Defence said on Monday August 21, 2006. His death brought to 20 the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001.
Taliban militants have set free 15 health workers shortly after abducting them at gunpoint in the southern Kandahar province we were told on Saturday August 19, 2006. The militants stopped a car carrying the 15 medical staff, but released the hostages on the same day just after their identity was made clear. The vehicle was on the way to a clinic in Ziari district when some armed Taliban militants intercepted it.
A Canadian soldier, Cpl. David Braun, was killed and three others were wounded in a suicide attack near a Canadian compound in Kandahar City On Wednesday August 23, 2006. Braun died when a vehicle packed with explosives ploughed into a Canadian supply convoy. A young Afghan civilian girl, and the attacker, were also killed. About two hours after the bombing, a Canadian soldier shot to death an Afghan teenager and seriously wounded a young boy when a motorcycle approached a security perimeter around the bombing site.
Two French Special Forces soldiers were killed Friday August 25, 2006, during armed combat with Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan. Two other air force non-commissioned officers were wounded in the operation.
Canadian soldiers killed an Afghan National Police officer and injured six others Saturday August 26, 2006, in two apparent friendly-fire shooting incidents in southern Afghanistan. The shootings took place just days after a Canadian soldier shot and killed an Afghan boy and injured a teenager following an incident in which a Canadian convoy was struck by a suicide bomber. In the first incident, Canadian soldiers fired on a truck carrying armed men after repeatedly warning the truck to stop. Several warning shots were fired, sparking a shootout that resulted in the death of one man and injuries to four others.
Two US-led coalition soldiers were killed and another two were wounded in a bomb attack in Lagham Province, eastern Afghanistan, on Saturday August 26, 2006. The bomb exploded as the troops conducted a combat patrol triggering a gunfight between coalition forces and a group of enemy extremists.
A British soldier has been killed in the southern Helmand province on August 27, 2006. The soldier, from 14 Signal Regiment based in Pembrokeshire, was "shot and killed" in a clash with enemy insurgents. The soldier brings the number of UK fatalities there since 2001 to 21.
Two French Special Forces soldiers were killed on Friday August 25, 2006, in an insurgent ambush in eastern Afghanistan.
A Dutch F-16 fighter plane of ISAF crashed on Thursday August24, 2006, killing the pilot.
An insurgent attack killed one British soldier, Ranger Anare Draiva, 27, who was Fijian and part of 1 Royal Irish Regiment, and seriously wounded another Friday September 1, 2006, in the southern province of Helmand, while suspected Taliban gunmen ambushed and shot dead a district chief. One militant was killed in the fighting. The wounded soldier was evacuated for medical treatment.
Suspected Taliban militants killed a district chief in the central Ghazni province on Friday September 1, 2006. Some Taliban suspects ambushed the vehicle carrying Habibullah Khan, Muqur district chief, who was on his way from the district to Ghazni city, the provincial capital. His two bodyguards were injured, Fakuri added.
A British spy plane crashed in Afghanistan on Saturday September 2, 2006, killing 14 military personnel in Britain's worst single loss in five years in the country. The Royal Air Force Nimrod MR2 aircraft was supporting the NATO mission in the country when it went down, apparently due to a technical problem, in the southern province of Kandahar. The dead include 12 Royal Air Force personnel, a Royal Marine and an army soldier. The RAF's Nimrod planes carry sophisticated reconnaissance and communications equipment enabling them to relay messages from troops on the ground. An on-board fire, we were told later, caused the plane crash.
At least four Afghan civilians and a British soldier have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a Nato convoy in the capital, Kabul on Monday September 4, 2006. At least three UK soldiers and four civilians were hurt in the blast on the Kabul-Jalalabad road. A Canadian soldier has been killed and several others wounded in a so-called "friendly fire" incident.
US warplanes mistakenly fired on Canadian troops fighting Taliban forces Monday September 4, 2006, in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier and wounding five in an operation that NATO said also has left 200 insurgents dead. A British soldier attached to NATO and four Afghans also were killed in a suicide vehicle bombing Monday in Kabul, while 16 suspected Taliban militants and five Afghan police were killed elsewhere in the country.
Three British soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan on Wednesday September 6, 2006. One soldier died in a mine explosion in Helmand but two further soldiers died. Of those, one was a soldier who had been seriously injured in an incident last Friday. The third soldier to die was seriously injured in the attack by insurgents. He died from his injuries with members of his family by his side. Five soldiers were "very seriously" injured and another was less badly hurt when the mine exploded. Nato said a patrol had unwittingly strayed on to an unmarked minefield. Three British soldiers who died on Wednesday are Corporal Mark William Wright who died attempting to save the life of an injured paratrooper, Lance Corporal Paul Muirhead who died of injuries five days after an attack on 1 September and Lee Darren Thornton.
A suicide car bombing attack on a US military convoy occurred near the American embassy in Kabul has killed at least 16 people including two US soldiers. Two others we injured.
A NATO military chief asked on September 8, 2006, for another 2,500 troops to be sent to southern Afghanistan to reinforce the Canadian and British battle groups that have been under fierce attack by the Taliban for the past two months. Appealing to the chiefs of staff of the alliance's 26 nations at a meeting in Warsaw, General James Jones, the American head of Nato in Europe, said that he also wanted more helicopters and transport aircraft.
The bodies of 14 servicemen killed when an RAF Nimrod crashed in Afghanistan have arrived back at the aircraft's home base at Kinloss in Moray on September 12. 2006. Twelve Kinloss-based airmen, a Royal Marine and a soldier died 10 days ago, after a suspected technical fault.
Poland said on Thursday September 14, 2006, it would send 1 000 troops to Afghanistan next February in the first offer since a Nato appeal for reinforcements, but it was unclear whether any would go to the heartland of a Taliban insurgency. Poland has agreed with NATO that the bulk of the troops would go to the east of the country instead of southern provinces, where Taliban fighters had regrouped.
German troops are likely to have their mission in Afghanistan extended by one year we were told on Wednesday September 13, 2006. Their current peacekeeping operation in the Central Asian state expires on October 13. The extension of the soldiers' participation in the international peacekeeping force first needs to be approved by the German parliament, possibly in a vote next week. Germany, however, will not send its troops to the volatile southern area. He said the nearly 3,000 German troops would remain in northern Afghanistan.
Suicide bombings have killed 173 people in Afghanistan this year, NATO announced Wednesday September 13, 2006 amid a sharp escalation of Taliban violence that saw 16 militants slain in southern clashes and an aid worker gunned down in the west.
NATO countries faced renewed calls on Friday September 15, 2006, to supply extra troops for Afghanistan. NATO's commander of operations, General James Jones of the United States, last week requested up to 2,500 extra troops to help combat fiercer-than-expected Taliban resistance in the south of the country before the onset of winter.
On September 15, 2006, we were told that Canada is sending about 200 extra troops as well as a squadron of heavy Leopard tanks to boost its 2300-strong mission in Afghanistan, which has clashed heavily with Taliban forces in recent weeks. Four tanks will be sent as soon as possible and as many as 15 could eventually be deployed. Canadian tanks have not been used in combat since the 1950-53 Korean War. In the past three months, 16 Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan, prompting calls for the troops to be brought home. Military leaders said they were responding to an increasingly aggressive enemy now using heavier weapons.
A suicide bomb attack in southern Afghanistan on September 17, 2006, killed at least four Canadian soldiers and injured many other people, including children. The Taliban claimed the attack. The NATO soldiers were handing out gifts to children Monday when a suicide bomber on a bicycle struck the gathering in Kandahar province's Panjawi district. The bombing came a day after the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and Afghan forces jointly declared the district free of Taliban insurgents. Since 2002, 36 Canadian soldiers and one Canadian diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan.
A suicide motorbike bombing on Monday September 18, 2006, killing 11 people and injuring many others in the western Herat province. 4 policemen and 7 civilians were killed in the blast and about 20 people injured. The attack occurred in front of a big mosque in Herat city, the provincial capital. The bombing target was apparently Herat's deputy police chief, who was injured in the explosion. Also on Monday, a suicide bombing rocked eastern Kabul killing three policemen and injuring eight others.
A Taliban spokesman claimed on September 19, 2006, that militants have shot dead a Turkish national who was kidnapped late in August. Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban, said Taliban militants killed Mustafa Samih Tufal, a Turkish national kidnapped last month. Ahmadi claimed militants killed Tufal in the Gereshk area in the south of the country, after his company failed to meet demands to leave Afghanistan.
France's defence minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, on Thursday September 21, 2006, ruled out sending more troops to Afghanistan, saying that French forces were already engaged elsewhere.
Safia Hama Jan, a leading women's rights advocate and outspoken critic
of the Taliban, was killed in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on
Monday September 25, 2006. Gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire at Hana Jan,
provincial director of the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs in insurgency-hit
Kandahar province, as she was leaving for work. She had died on the spot.
Local officials have launched an investigation into the incident, blaming
the ongoing Taliban insurgency in the area for the attack.
Some 19 people, including 13 civilians, were killed and another 20 were wounded when a suicide bomber on Tuesday September 25, 2006 blew himself up at a security post near a mosque in Lashkar Gah, capital of the restive southern Helmand province. Many of the dead were ordinary Afghans, who had gathered in front of the mosque to register their names and go on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca later this year. Two police and four national army soldiers were also killed in this attack.
At least 12 people have died after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the interior ministry in Kabul on September 30, 2006. 42 people, including two policemen, had been injured in the blast. The attacker detonated explosives at a busy gate outside the ministry building as staff arrived at work.
A defence ministry source has revealed on September 30, 2006, that German military aircraft are seeing action in the southern region of Afghanistan. The report comes days after German help in the south was officially ruled out.
Two US and one Afghan soldier were killed and three others injured overnight
in fighting with insurgents on Monday October 3, 2006. The soldiers were
operating as part of a combat patrol in Pech district of Kunar province.
The injured were medically evacuated to a US treatment facility in Asadabad,
where they remained in stable condition.
Two Canadian soldiers were killed and five wounded on October 4, 2006. The
Nato soldiers came under fire from mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and
small arms while helping to clear explosives from an area planned for road
construction about 20km west of Kandahar. Thirty-nine members of the Canadian
Armed Forces have been killed in Afghanistan since late 2001. Canada has
2300 soldiers based in Kandahar.
Nato took charge on October 5, 2006, of Afghanistan's eastern provinces, which have been under the control of US forces since the Taliban were ousted five years ago. The alliance's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) already commands troops in the north, west and south of Afghanistan, as well as Kabul. Officials say the move will make the force more efficient, as it seeks to secure Afghanistan for reconstruction. Afghanistan represents the biggest ground deployment in Nato's history. Some 10,000 US troops are under the command of Gen David Richards from the UK. The addition of US troops brings the total number of troops under Nato command in Afghanistan to about 31,000.
Princess Anne visited British troops in Afghanistan on Thursday October 5, 2006, the first member of the royal family to do so since the war started. The princess and her husband, Rear Admiral Timothy Laurence, travelled to Kabul, Kandahar and the southern province of Helmand, where most of Britain's forces are based.
Latvia's parliament on Thursday October 5, 2006, extended the nation's 36-member mission in Afghanistan by one year until October 2007.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, making an unannounced visit to Iraq on Thursday October 5, 2006, said that its leaders had limited time to settle political differences spurring sectarian and insurgent violence. Also on Thursday, the US military said it was performing DNA tests on a slain militant to determine whether he was Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaida in Iraq. US and Iraqi officials said it did not appear that Masri had been killed.
British forces in Afghanistan will be provided with whatever resources they need, the prime minister said on October 7, 2006. He said this included providing more armoured vehicles and more helicopters. Mr Blair praised the courage displayed during a "very tough" operation and acknowledged it was still "lawless" in the south where most troops were based.
The 40th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan, the victim of a roadside bombing, has been identified on October 7, 2006. Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson of the Royal Canadian Dragoons of CFB Petawawa was on a pre-dawn patrol when either a roadside bomb or a landmine detonated.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair promised on Saturday October 7, 2006, to provide British troops in Afghanistan with enough resources, describing the fighting in the Asian country as "very tough." Why waiting until now?
Two German journalists, Karen Fischer and Christian Struwe working as freelancers for Deutsche Welle, Germany's state-owned broadcast outlet who were sleeping in a tent on the side of a road outside a northern Afghan village were killed by gunmen early Saturday October 7, 2006. The freelance journalists conducting research for a documentary were the first foreign reporters killed in Afghanistan since late 2001, when eight journalists died. The two were travelling through the northern province of Baghlan, had stopped outside a small village, where they set up a tent to spend the night.
A NATO soldier was killed on October 7, 2006, by militants who detonated a roadside bomb and fired on a military patrol in southern Afghanistan. A suicide car bomber targeted a US patrol in eastern Afghanistan but caused no casualties. The militant fighters who once appeared soundly defeated have returned with a vengeance, taking control of large swaths of countryside in the last year. More than 3,000 people have been killed this year, mostly militants battling Western forces. Some 40,000 US and NATO troops are now in Afghanistan, 2 1/2 times the number three years ago.
Commanders in the British Army have decided not to send prince Harry to fight on the frontline in Afghanistan as it might be "too dangerous" for the young royal we were told on Sunday October 8, 2006. And for the others?
The governor of the Afghan district of Chogyani, as well as the its police chief and security head were killed in a bomb attack in the country's eastern province of Nangarhar on Monday October 9, 2006. Two bodyguards were also killed by a remote-controlled bomb, as the officials were heading by car to a location were a school was burned down by extremists overnight. A Taliban spokesman, Yusouf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the killings. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said that at least 52 radical Islamist rebels had been killed in fighting in the southern province of Uruzgan. A gun battle lasting several hours took place Sunday after rebels attacked ISAF and Afghan army soldiers. It said there were no casualties among the ISAF forces, who are comprised mainly of Dutch soldiers.
A report by the Lancet claims on October 11, 2006, that 650,000 Iraqis have died since the American led invasion three years ago and its bloody sectarian aftermath -a far higher figure than previous estimates. According to a report published by the Lancet medical journal, there have been 500 additional deaths a day since March 2003 -with most due to violence and a third attributable to the actions of US-led forces.
Two Canadian soldiers were killed in fighting in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Saturday October 4, 2006. This year is the bloodiest since the Islamist Taliban government was toppled by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001. More than 2,500 people, including about 140 foreign soldiers, have been killed across the country. Since 2002, 42 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan.
On October 14, 2006, we were told that Britain is so short of helicopters
in Afghanistan that military chiefs are being forced to scour the world
for civilian aircraft to support its troops after the US rejected a plea
to help plug the shortfall. An ageing fleet of just eight Chinooks is working
around the clock to supply and reinforce soldiers in remote outposts facing
waves of Taliban attacks.
An Italian photojournalist has been abducted in south Afghanistan while travelling on a bus between the restive provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Gabriele Torsello phoned a local hospital to say he had been kidnapped on Thursday October 12, 2006, and did not know where he was.
British troops could be in Afghanistan for another 20 years, said a main opposition Conservative MP and Territorial Army soldier on October 16, 2006. Mark Lancaster has just returned from a tour of duty there.
A British Royal Marine and two children died on October 19, 2006, after a suicide attack on a patrol in southern Afghanistan. The deaths took place in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, after a bomber targeted a Nato vehicle. Officials said another marine was very seriously injured. A policeman has died in an attack in Khost province.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Thursday October 19, 206, that additional troops are needed in Afghanistan's south, where alliance soldiers have taken heavy casualties in fighting with Taliban forces. De Hoop Scheffer backed calls by NATO's top commander, US General James L. Jones, for allied nations to send up to 2,500 more troops to southern Afghanistan, where soldiers from Canada, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands have borne the brunt of fighting with a resurgent Taliban.
On October 21, 2006, we were told that The Netherlands will send a total of 330 soldiers to southern Afghanistan in the coming weeks, boosting its presence there to 1730 troops. Britain, Canada and the Netherlands are leading an expansion of NATO forces into the dangerous south of Afghanistan, where violence has surged in recent months.
On October 22, 2006, we were told that Canada will send at least 125 more
troops to Afghanistan early next month. The additional manpower is needed
to assist in fighting the Taliban. Canada now has 2,300 troops in Afghanistan.
Canada has lost 43 dead and at least 160 wounded in the violent fighting.
It is the largest loss Canada has suffered since the Korean War in the early
1950's.