BBC News – Three US soldiers killed in Afghanistan blast

Tuesday, 14 May 2013. Three US soldiers with the Nato-led force in Afghanistan have been killed by a roadside bomb, officials say.

A government spokesman in the southern province of Kandahar said the soldiers were in a convoy in Zhari district. Several others were reported wounded.

Taliban insurgents announced the start of their spring offensive in March.

This is the latest of a series of attacks this month on international troops, who are due to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Some 100,000 soldiers are still serving with the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in the country.

Hostages freed

“We can confirm that three soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan today (Tuesday),” Isaf spokesman Maj Bryan Purtell was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

The spokesman added that the earlier death toll of four had been revised down and a recovery operation was taking place at the scene.

The coalition and local Afghan officials confirmed that all the victims were Americans.

On Monday, three Georgian soldiers serving with the Nato-led Isaf force died in an attack in the neighbouring province of Helmand.

On 1 May, three British soldiers died in a roadside bomb blast. Three days later, seven Isaf soldiers were killed in separate attacks.

In another development, the Taliban is reported to have freed the last four of eight Turkish civilians who were seized in April.

The Turks were in a group of 11 people captured in eastern Logar province when their helicopter was forced to land in bad weather.

The fate of two pilots, from Russia and Kyrgyzstan, and an Afghan translator remains unclear.

On Monday, Reuters quoted the Taliban as saying that the three captives were still alive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22529417

Dawn – Triple attacks kill 12 in Afghanistan

Kabul, 9 May 2012. Afghan officials say seven Afghan policemen, four Education Ministry employees and a body guard have been killed in three separate attacks.

Gawas Malayar, deputy police chief in Farah province, says a roadside bomb killed five police officers Tuesday in Pusht Rod district in western Afghanistan.

Din Mohammad Darwesh, a spokesman for the governor of Logar province in the east, says two other policemen were killed Tuesday when Taliban militants ambushed them in a bazaar near the provincial capital of Pul-e-Alam.

Khorshid Aman, the chief of Urgun district of Paktika province, says a group of employees of the Education Ministry was traveling from the district to the provincial capital of Sharan when the militants ambushed their two vehicles.

The top education official in the province and one other person in the group also were wounded in Tuesday’s attack.

Separately, Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke on the phone Tuesday to relatives of civilians killed in Nato airstrikes that he says run the risk of turning the recently signed US-Afghan partnership agreement into a “meaningless” document.

http://dawn.com/2012/05/09/triple-attacks-kill-12-in-afghanistan/

BBC News – Afghan attacks: Fighting ‘over’ in Kabul

Monday 16 April 2012. Fighting in the Afghan capital has finally ended, 18 hours after the Taliban launched their assault, officials have said.

A spokesman for Kabul’s police chief said the last gunman, who was fighting near the parliament in the west of the city, was killed early on Monday.

Earlier, security forces flushed out insurgents in the central diplomatic area, home to several embassies.

Officials said at least 17 gunmen and one police officer have died.

More than 30 people were injured, many of them civilians.

Attackers also carried out raids in the provinces of Logar, Paktia and Nangarhar.

Hostage reports

In Kabul, foreign embassies, Nato’s HQ and the Afghan parliament were hit in the first major attack on the city in more than six months.

“The latest information we have about the Afghan parliament area is that the attack is over now and the only insurgent who was resisting has been killed,” said the Kabul police chief’s spokesman Hashmatullah Stanikzai.

In the central district of Wazir Akbar Khan, offcials said Afghan and Norwegian special forces raided a construction site which the attackers had been using as a base.

Video footage showed soldiers scaling the scaffolding after dawn on Monday, as bullets blasted off walls around them.

The BBC’s Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says there are reports that the gunmen took several construction workers hostage.

“I could not sleep because of all this gunfire now. It’s been the whole night,” local resident Hamdullah told Reuters.

Afghan officials said they have also arrested two would-be suicide bombers, who intended to kill the second vice-president, Mohamed Karim Khalili.

The Taliban said the co-ordinated attacks were a response to recent claims by Nato officials that the insurgency was weak.

“These attacks are the beginning of the spring offensive and we had planned them for months,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters.

Correspondents say the attacks have shattered the confidence of Afghans, as the insurgents have once more shown that they can strike right in the heart of Kabul.

The assault has also raised concern about security as Nato prepares to withdraw its troops by the end of 2014 and hand over reponsibility to Afghan forces.

Elsewhere in the country, gunmen attacked government buildings in Logar province, the airport in Jalalabad, and a police facility in the town of Gardez in Paktia province.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17724261