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03/13/2006:

"Bomb kills 4 US soldiers in Afghanistan"

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers were killed on Sunday after a blast ripped through their armoured vehicle in Afghanistan, the U.S. military said.

The soldiers were killed during a patrol in the eastern province of Kunar, which lies close to the border with Pakistan, in an attack claimed by Taliban insurgents.

"The extremists that initiated this senseless attack create a significant danger and threat to the Afghan people," said Major General Benjamin C. Freakely for the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

The attack marked the U.S. military's single biggest loss in a day in the country for several months and brought to 10 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year.
reuters.com


Afghan president survives suicide attack
A FORMER Afghan president who heads a government commission seeking to encourage Taliban defections has survived a suicide car bomb attack today that killed two bombers and two civilians, officials said.

Sibghatullah Mojadidi, who also chairs the upper house of parliament, or senate, was in a car being driven on a busy main road when attackers detonated a car laden with explosives near his vehicle.

"The aim of the attack was Mr Mojadidi," Zalmai Oryakhel, the senior police officer for the area, said.

Witnesses said two vehicles in Mojadidi's convoy were damaged but an official of President Hamid Karzai's office said Mojadidi was not injured.


Pakistan accused of Afghan terror attack
The head of the upper-house of the Afghan parliament has accused the Pakistani secret service of being behind a suicide bombing which injured him and killed four other people in Kabul. The attack came during a weekend of violence in which four US servicemen died in the deadliest roadside bomb attack on Americans in a month and six Afghan policemen were killed, two of them beheaded, after being abducted from their homes. Elsewhere an armed gang abducted four Albanians working for a German company and their four Afghan bodyguards.

The charge against Pakistan by Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, a former president of the country, who is now leading a reconciliation programme with the Taliban, is the latest round in bitter feud between the two countries over insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.

President Hamid Karzai has claimed that senior Taliban figures, including the former head Mullah Mohammed Omar, are living in Pakistan and using the country as a base to infiltrate fighters across the border. His officials accuse the Pakistani intelligence serevice, ISI, of recruiting and training suicide bombers.


Pakistan Army Kills 30 Militants on Border
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani soldiers backed by helicopter gunships attacked a suspected militant hideout in Pakistan's volatile tribal region near the Afghan border and killed about 30 fighters, an army spokesman said Saturday.

But residents and hardline clerics disputed the military's claim, saying most of the dead were local villagers, including women and children.