Afghan bombing kills 21, including US soldier By RAHIM FAIEZ - AP Nov. 13, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber targeting a passing U.S. military convoy blew up his car near a crowded market in eastern Afghanistan Thursday, killing at least 21 people, including an American soldier, officials said.
The explosion also wounded 74 people near the market where people were trading sheep cows, goats and other animals in the Bati Kot district outside Jalalabad, Afghan police and health officials said.
An American military vehicle, two other vehicles and a couple of rickshaws were destroyed in the blast.
Atifa Bibi, an Afghan school girl, recovers in a hospital after two men on a motor- bike threw acid on her in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008.
Two men on a motorbike threw acid on six Afghan girls walking to school in Kandahar on Wednesday, hospitalizing two of the girls with serious burns, said Dr. Sharifa Siddiqi. Four others were treated and released.
Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews, a U.S. military spokesman, said at least 20 civilians and a U.S. soldier were killed. The soldier's death brings the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan to at least 148, the highest number of troop deaths per year since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
There were 111 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan in the whole of 2007.
Taliban militants regularly use suicide attackers and car bombs in their assaults against U.S., Afghan and other foreign troops in the country.
More than 5,400 people, of whom nearly 1,000 civilians, have died in insurgency related violence this year, according to a tally compiled by the Associated Press based on figures provided by Afghan and international officials.
On Wednesday, a suicide bomber driving a tanker truck hauling oil detonated his explosives outside an Afghan government office during a provincial council meeting in the southern city of Kandahar, killing six people and wounded 42, officials said.
The blast in the Taliban's former stronghold came as the provincial council was hearing constituent complaints. Two members of the provincial council were wounded in the attack, said Kandahar's Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi.
The explosion ripped through the council office, flattened five nearby homes and damaged the offices of the country's intelligence service. It left a crater some 15 feet into the ground.
Raufi blamed Taliban militants for the attack.
Associated Press writer Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul contributed to this report.
Gunmen Abduct Envoy in Pakistan JANE PERLEZ November 13, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen abducted an Iranian diplomat in the chaotic city of Peshawar in Pakistan’s northwest Thursday, a day after the assassination of an American aid official there.
The diplomat, Hesmatollah Atharzadeh, who was the commercial counselor at the Iranian consulate, was leaving his house in the suburb of Hayatabad when the gunmen attacked, the police said. His driver also was killed.
The kidnapping of the Iranian comes after a series of suicide bombings by Taliban militants in Peshawar in the last few months. The police said they suspected Islamic militants were involved in the killing of the American aid worker, Stephen D. Vance.
On Monday night, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the city’s main stadium after the closing ceremony of interprovincial games, the first such event after a new secular provincial government lifted the ban on sports imposed by a coalition of religious parties.
According to police accounts, Mr. Atharzadeh was snatched when he was on his way to work. The attackers sprayed bullets at the car and dragged the diplomat away, the police said.
An Afghan diplomat, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was kidnapped from Hayatabad two months ago, and is still missing. The suburb of Hayatabad abuts the Khyber region of the Federally Administered Tribal Area, and is the first point of entry for militants coming from the tribal area into Peshawar.
Kidnappings in Hayatabad have become so frequent in the last year that many well-to-do Pakistanis who lived in substantial homes there have fled, leaving the area to diplomats and middle-class families.
Iran maintains a consulate in Peshawar so that it can organize pilgrimages to Iran for Pakistani Shia from Kurram in the tribal region. There is also considerable trade between Iran and the northwestern city.
The Taliban and their Al Qaeda supporters control much of the tribal region adjacent to Peshawar and the militants have tightened their grip on the city, terrorizing residents but stopping short of attempting a takeover.
Peshawar is the headquarters of the 11th Corps of the Pakistani Army. The provincial police force has been trying to battle the militants in the towns around Peshawar by organizing operations backed by helicopter gunships.
But the Taliban, backed by criminal gangs, appear to have superior intelligence that enables them to track the movements of politicians, diplomats and wealthy Pakistanis.
In the wake of the assassination of Mr. Vance Wednesday, some American aid workers were evacuated from the city and flown back to the United States.
November 10, 2008 Girl, 13, is Iraq's latest suicide bomber
Baghdad has been hit by a string of bombings in the past week, but the US military says
Philippe Naughton
A 13-year-old girl became Iraq's latest suicide bomber today, killing four people at a security checkpoint in the town of Baquba.
On a day of renewed violence, at least 31 people were killed in a double bombing at a Baghdad market, the deadliest attack to rock the Iraqi capital in months. The attackers first detonated a car bomb in the Sunni district of Adhamiyah, hitting a minibus carrying girls to school. As a crowd gathered to help the girls, a suicide bomber ran in and blew himself up.
The Interior Ministry said that 31 people were killed and 71 wounded in the deadliest to hit Baghdad since June 17 when 51 people were killed in a car bombing in the Al-Hurriya district.
In the Baquba attack, the girl blew herself up at a checkpoint manned by members of the Sunni Muslim 'Awakening' councils, which have led the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Four men, including a leading Sunni militiaman, were killed and 15 civilians wounded.
Witnesses said that the Baghdad attack took place at about 8am (0500 GMT) on a street lined with restaurants and coffee shops popular with Iraqi security forces, as a bus carrying young girls to school drove past.
“There was a huge explosion, and before I went out to look another bomb went off,” said Fadel Hussein, a waiter at a teahouse on Kassra Street, the scene of the bombings. “Heavy smoke was every- where. There were so many bloody victims on the ground, we helped to evacuate those people to ambulances."
The US and Iraqi military cordoned off the area that was littered with glass and scorched cars as sobbing parents desperately searched for their sons and daughters.
One woman in her 40s and wearing a black abaya, the traditional black Arabic dress, sat on the ground crying un- controllably. She sobbed: “I’m waiting for my husband who is inside the area looking for my son. I hope he is still alive."
Ahmed Riyadh, 54, owner of a nearby grocery, said the bombing was a “vicious attack" that “did not differentiate between Shi'ites and Sunnis”.
"We are fed up with such attacks and we want only to live in peace,” he said. “The politicians should work hard and set aside their differences to stop the bloodshed.”
Among those killed were three policemen, three women and five children, police said.
Suicide attacks are usually the hallmark of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which continues to have a small presence in Baghdad despite major setbacks after repeated Iraqi and American military sweeps.
Despite the dramatic improvement in security in large sections of Iraq, including the capital, militants continue to launch near daily attacks, most of them targeting US and Iraqi security forces.
Baghdad has been hit by a string of bombings in the past week, most of them small roadside bombs that claimed a handful of victims. The US military says the capital has become much safer since the launch last year of a joint Iraqi-US security plan which cut attacks by about 90 per cent to an average of four a day.
According to the Iraqi military, the number of car bombings in the capital has also fallen sharply, falling from a total of 415 in 2006 to 61 so far in 2008.
Drone missile strike kills British 'liquid-bomb plotter'
The alleged British mastermind of an audacious terrorist plot was killed yesterday by a missile strike in Pakistan.
Andrew Alderson, Sean Rayment and Massoud Ansari in Islamabad 22 Nov 2008
1 of 5 Images Rauf has been on the run since escaping from a Pakistani jail nearly a year ago
Rashid Rauf, 27, who was brought up in Birmingham, was killed along with at least four other alleged militants in the attack on the house in the North Waziristan area.
Rauf, who had been on the run after escaping from Pakistani custody last year, had been accused of playing a key role in a liquid-bomb plot allegedly targeting transatlantic airliners in 2006. He had been arrested in Pakistan in August 2006.
Senior Pakistani government officials last night confirmed reports that Rauf had been killed by precision-guided missiles from a drone. The target was in the village of Alikhel, part of a district known as a stronghold for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
“The transatlantic bombing plot alleged mastermind Rashid Rauf was killed along with an Egyptian al-Qaeda operative in the US missile strike in North Waziristan,” a senior Pakistani security official said.
The pre-dawn attack came just two days after Pakistan lodged a protest with the US ambassador over missile attacks on its territory. Pakistan said the strikes infringed its sovereignty.
Islamist militants use the mountainous tribal areas along the between the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as a safe haven for training and resupply.
Security officials said another of the dead was Abu Zubair al-Masri, an Egyptian militant suspected of terrorism. Five people are believed to have died with a further six wounded.
Sherry Rehman, the Pakistani information minister, told The Sunday Telegraph: “Sources have confirmed to us that Rashid Rauf and al-Masri were the targets and they have been killed. However, it would have been better if Pakistani authorities had been alerted for local action. Drone incursions create a strong backlash.”
In the past month there have been 25 US drone attacks from Afghanistan, killing almost 250 and wounding scores of others.
Rauf, who had British and Pakistani citizenship, escaped from Pakistani authorities after appearing before a judge in an Islamabad court in December last year. While taking him back to jail, his guards had stopped at a mosque so he could pray. At the time, he faced extradition to Britain.
The escape caused severe embarrassment to the Pakistani government and prompted unconfirmed claims that Rauf had been taken to a secret detention centre by intelligence officials.
After the escape, Khalid Pervez, a city official, said that Rauf managed to open his handcuffs and evade police guards taking him back to Adiala prison in the nearby city of Rawalpindi. Despite a huge manhunt, he was not recaptured.
Details of the liquid-bomb plot emerged in August 2006 and paralysed global air travel. It prompted stringent security measures at airports globally.
A senior Pakistani official had previously described Rauf as “an al-Qaeda operative with linkages in Afghanistan”.
Rauf is understood to have left Birmingham following the stabbing of his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, 54, in April 2002. Once in Pakistan, he quickly fell in with al-Qaeda sympathisers.
For many of the young British-born radicals who volunteered to join the jihad against Britain and other western countries, Rauf would have been their first point of contact on arriving in Pakistan. He would have made sure they were not followed and would have given them food and shelter in a safe house before taking them to training camps in northern Pakistan. In recent years, the war against al-Qaeda has been defined by new, more deadly tactics and the CIA has been successfully “degrading” al-Qaeda’s leadership by assassinating its leaders using the US Air Force’s unmanned Predator.
The tactic is something of a double-edged sword. While it has had undoubted success in disrupting
al-Qaeda, the civilian deaths, which often accompany intelligence-led operations, are thought to be further radicalising increasing numbers of young men in Pakistan and Britain.
Rauf’s lawyer, Hasmat Habib, said the suspected militant’s family in Pakistan had no information about his apparent death. “He was an innocent man, a god-fearing, devout polite man and this is an extra-judicial killing,” he said.
Rauf’s family had little comment at their terraced home in the Ward End area of Birmingham yesterday. Two men initially emerged from the property, but one, with a full beard and wearing a blue tracksuit, instructed the other to go back into the house.
The remaining man, believed to be a relative of the alleged terrorist, then ordered the media to leave the driveway of his home or risk injury. “I am angry,” he said. “For your own safety, all I can say to you is, 'goodbye’.”
Earlier this year, Rauf’s younger brother, Tayib Rauf, 24, said he “feared for Rashid’s life”. He added: “My fear is that he may be killed – when previous prisoners have escaped out there, they have been found dead. When we found out it had happened, I just couldn’t believe it. I thought, 'Why has he done that?’ At least when he was arrested, we knew he was safe and OK – but now I’m expecting the worst.”
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