| Submit your comments on this article |
| Afghanistan |
| 11 Taliban killed, 12 captured, 3 Afghan cops killed |
| 2006-04-30 |
| Afghan troops backed by coalition forces killed 11 Taliban militants and detained a dozen, including top commanders, in separate raids across volatile southern Afghanistan while insurgents ambushed and shot dead three policemen, officials said Saturday. Taliban militants also threatened Saturday to execute Indian hostage K. Suryanarayana if all Indians didn't leave Afghanistan within 24 hours, according to the insurgent group's purported spokesman. Suryanarayana was abducted Friday when driving through another dangerous southern province, Zabul. Meanwhile, a boy herding cows accidentally detonated an anti-tank mine south of Kabul, killing himself and another child and wounding two others, police said Saturday. Afghanistan is littered with landmines left over from almost three decades of conflict. Nine Taliban militants were killed during fighting that raged late Friday into Saturday, while 12 insurgents, including top commanders, were captured in the joint Afghan-coalition operation in Panjwayi, a western district in the southern Kandahar province, said Gov. Asadullah Khalid. Khalid said seven more Taliban members were wounded and carried away by fleeing militants. "Taliban and foreign al-Qaida fighters are working together against our forces across southern Afghanistan, including in Panjwayi," Khalid told The Associated Press. It was unclear if any of the 12 detainees were members of the al-Qaida terror network. Later Saturday morning, about 50 Afghan soldiers and police attacked a Taliban camp hidden in mountains in the Kajaki district, about 100 kilometres north of the Helmand capital of Lashkar Gah, local Afghan army commander Gen. Rahmattalluh Roufi said. After an hour-long battle, Afghan forces ventured into the mountains and found caves that had been used by Taliban militants. The bodies of two slain militants were found along with several machine-guns. Taliban militants concealed in mountains also fired on a vehicle carrying four policemen late Friday, killing three and wounding the other on a remote road outside the southern Helmand provincial town of Baghran. Taliban militants have been blamed for a spike in violence across Afghanistan's southern provinces, which were long strongholds of the hardline regime that was toppled in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion. In a speech at a Kabul stadium to several thousand students, President Hamid Karzai condemned the Taliban for the incessant violence as well as attacks against schools. "There are 100,000 students who can't go to school in the five southern provinces of Uruzgan, Helmand, Kandahar, Khost and Zabul because they have been closed as a result of the enemies of this country burning and attacking their schools," Karzai said. Two schools housed in temporary tents were burned to the ground Thursday and Friday in the northern Sari Pul province, believed carried out by Taliban extremists opposed to co-education for Afghan boys and girls. Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who releases regular statements on behalf of outlawed Taliban fighters, said militants kidnapped Indian telecommunications engineer Suryanarayana on suspicion that he was an American spy. "We warn all Indians working here to leave Afghanistan within 24 hours starting 6 p.m. Saturday (2:30 a.m. EDT Sunday) , otherwise we will kill him," Ahmadi said after contacting AP by telephone. Suryanarayana, a father of three from Hyderabad aged in his early 40s, was held up at gunpoint while driving Friday afternoon on the Kandahar-Kabul highway in the Hassan Kariez district of Zabul, the scene of a recent spate of increased militant activity. He has worked since January for a Bahrain-based company, al-Moayed, which has been contracted by an Afghan mobile phone company, Roshan, to expand its network across volatile provinces in southern Afghanistan. The kidnapping was the first here since four Macedonians of Albanian descent were kidnapped and killed in March, purportedly by Taliban militants. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Move the schools into the village headman's compound, and make ensuring the schooling of the children his personal responsibility. Or perhaps into the local police/military compound. Somewhere in the midst of armed men at night, where someone is personally responsible for ensuring that it's still there for the children in the morning. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-04-30 05:11 |