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wartsttocs
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 Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 9:36 am Post subject: |
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Two killed in attack on 12 NATO tankers
| Quote: | At least 12 tankers carrying fuel for US-led forces in war-torn Afghanistan have been destroyed as they hit roadside bombs in Uruzgan, killing two drivers and injuring six others.
The convoy of tankers hit several roadside bombs planted on a road in Trinkut city in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, Ahmad Milad Mudasir a spokesman for the province told a Press TV correspondent.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Investigation is underway to determine the group behind the assault.
It took three hours for fire fighters to extinguish the fire. A nearby market was also damaged in the Wednesday fire in Uruzgan which has been a Taliban stronghold and has served as a haven for leaders operating in Kandahar and Helmand province.
Meanwhile, two other tankers carrying fuel supplies for NATO troops were torched in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan late on Wednesday.
The US military and NATO rely heavily on the Pakistani supply route into landlocked Afghanistan, more so now that Taliban attacks are increasing.
Supplies arrive by sea in the southern port city of Karachi, where security analysts believe most of the Afghan Taliban leadership is now hiding. From there, they must travel in long, exposed convoys, through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwest Pakistan.
Militants in the rugged tribal area have staged attacks in recent months, torching hundreds of NATO vehicles and containers destined for foreign troops in Afghanistan.
RZS/HRF |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/170353.html |
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wartsttocs
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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This is a big story. Billions to fight cheap bombs made of scrap metal and the billions are losing.
Pentagon spends billions to fight roadside bombs, with little success
By Peter Cary and Nancy A. Youssef | Center for Public Integrity and McClatchy Newspapers
| Quote: | WASHINGTON — In February 2006, with roadside bombs killing more and more American soldiers in Iraq, the Pentagon created an agency to defeat the deadly threat and tasked a retired four-star general to run it.
Five years later, the agency has ballooned into a 1,900-employee behemoth and has spent nearly $17 billion on hundreds of initiatives. Yet the technologies it's developed have failed to significantly improve U.S. soldiers' ability to detect unexploded roadside bombs and have never been able to find them at long distances. Indeed, the best detectors remain the low-tech methods: trained dogs, local handlers and soldiers themselves.
review by the Center for Public Integrity and McClatchy of government reports and interviews with auditors, investigators and congressional staffers show that the agency — the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization — also violated its own accounting rules and hasn't properly evaluated its initiatives to keep mistakes from being repeated.
Meanwhile, roadside bombs remain the single worst killer of soldiers as more U.S. forces have been transferred out of Iraq and into Afghanistan. Known in military parlance as improvised explosive devices, the crude, often-homemade bombs killed 368 coalition troops in Afghanistan last year, by far the highest annual total since 2001, when the U.S.-led war there began, according to icasualties.org, which tracks military casualties in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Among the serious questions about how well JIEDDO has spent its billions:
•The agency failed to collect data on its projects, leading a congressional investigative subcommittee to conclude in 2008, "The nation does not yet know if JIEDDO is winning the (counter-IED) fight."
•Some of its spending went to programs that had little to do with its core mission, including $400 million for Army force protection in 2010 and $24.6 million to hire private contractors for intelligence operations in Afghanistan.
•Agency officials misreported some $795 million in costs, the Government Accountability Office said, circumventing its own rules requiring high-level Defense Department approval for projects with price tags greater than $25 million.
•JIEDDO's staff comprises six contractors for every government employee, a ratio that its outgoing director acknowledged needs to be reduced.
•While the agency was mandated to "lead, advocate (and) coordinate" anti-roadside bomb initiatives, more than 100 groups and initiatives inside and outside the Defense Department continue "to develop, maintain and in many cases expand" their own work, the GAO found.
Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., a former Marine and an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, said the Pentagon and its anti-IED agencies, including JIEDDO, could do far better in preventing casualties from roadside bombs.
"So as long as the IED metric keeps going up, and as long as we keep taking the majority of our KIA (killed in action) casualties from IEDs, then they've all been unsuccessful. Period," he said.
One U.S. soldier who was based in Baghdad in 2008 said: "We were out there every day. We studied our destroyed vehicles, and (the enemy's IED tactics) kept changing. So we kept trying new ideas, anything, to stop them. JIEDDO didn't help us." The soldier declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, who recently stepped down as the agency's director, its third in five years, acknowledged missteps but said they were inevitable because the agency was tasked with producing devices quickly.
"We fund things," Oates said. "Sometimes we fund things that don't work. Some call that waste; I call it risk."
One of the things that apparently didn't work was the Joint IED Neutralizer, created in 2002 by an Arizona start-up called Ionatron. Looking like a pair of boxy golf carts, the JIN fired ultra-short pulse lasers followed by a half-million-volt lightning bolt of electricity, and its makers said it could detonate the blasting caps that triggered IEDs from well outside blast range.
In 2005, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz authorized $30 million for the JIN despite skepticism from scientists, who said damp ground or dust would render the device useless. During test runs in Afghanistan in 2006, the JIN was disappointing: It had trouble climbing steep mountain terrain and experienced safety problems, continuing to shoot lightning bolts after its switch was turned off.
After the JIN received some publicity, an insurgent website published ways to defeat it. The test vehicles were shipped back to the United States.
In mid-2006, shareholders filed two class-action suits against the JIN's makers, alleging that the firm had concealed the fact that the vehicle wasn't capable of meeting government specifications. The company, which had changed its name to Applied Energetics Inc., denied the claims but settled the suit in September 2009 by paying $5.3 million in cash and another $1.2 million in stock to the complaining shareholders. The firm didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.
Still, the project wouldn't die. With a $400,000 earmark from Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and $1.5 million more from JIEDDO, the Marine Corps hung the JIN on the front of a mine roller. A slide from a May 2009 Marine Corps briefing shows a device attached to mine rollers shooting a bolt of electricity into the ground.
"People have been trying to use a Tesla coil" — a transformer that can produce very high-voltage discharges — "for years to defeat mines. It has never worked," said Dan Goure, a former defense official who's a vice president at the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area research center.
The devices JIEDDO designed to detect roadside bombs at a distance didn't work out, Goure said. They included airplane- or drone-based radars, long-range radars to sniff out buried control wires, and detectors to sense explosive ingredients such as ammonium nitrate fertilizer.
Other projects that were started but abandoned include: Alexis and Electra-C, which emitted waves to detonate IEDs but interfered with jammers; an unmanned Humvee called Forerunner that soldiers said "induced operator vertigo" and was hard to control, according to a JIEDDO report; and a high-powered microwave emitter called BlowTorch that was designed to defeat heat-triggered IEDs but which insurgents figured out how to overcome.
"We were throwing new technologies into this like fast-food orders at a diner," Goure said.
JIEDDO officials said the agency quickly terminated programs that weren't promising. But the GAO and some congressional staffers countered that the agency has never been good at choosing or steering its projects.
"It's been a weakness from the beginning. They don't have good controls over start-ups," said Bill Solis, the director of defense capabilities and management at the GAO, which has authored several studies on the agency.
JIEDDO spent more than $3 billion on jammers to thwart radio-controlled IEDs, which most say was a good idea. It bought mine rollers to attach to the fronts of vehicles. However, critics note that what many consider the most successful anti-roadside bomb program was only marginally funded by JIEDDO: the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, now operating mainly in Afghanistan. While JIEDDO purchased the first 250 MRAPs, designed to withstand roadside bombs, it was a separate MRAP task force that bought more than 22,000 of them for $36 billion.
Oates, the agency's former director, has said the "greatest return on the dollar" has been training soldiers to detect and respond to roadside bomb attacks.
The GAO noted that the agency spent $70.7 million from 2007 to 2009 on "role-players in an effort to simulate Iraqi social, political and religious groups" at Pentagon training centers.
At one training site, the agency spent $24.1 million to make steel shipping containers resemble Iraqi buildings.
"I just couldn't believe it," said a former congressional staffer, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to speak publicly.
The agency's new director, Lt. Gen Michael Barbero, took over earlier this month fresh off a tour in Iraq. Among his tasks will be collecting data on what works and what doesn't, and improving relations with Congress, which had complained in the past about a lack of information to evaluate the agency's performance.
In debate over the 2010 Pentagon budget, for instance, the House Armed Services Committee threatened to withhold half the agency's money "until the committee is provided JIEDDO's detailed budget and program information."
Few in Congress wanted to be seen giving short shrift to the fight against roadside bombs, however. Year after year, the agency has received the federal funding it requested, to the tune of $20.8 billion over six years.
Roadside bomb attacks continue to increase in Afghanistan, averaging roughly 1,500 per month at the end of last year. The number of U.S. troops wounded by IEDs skyrocketed to 3,366 in 2010, compared with 2,386 during the previous nine years combined, according to data JIEDDO collected.
Despite years of effort, soldiers have long had only a 50-50 success rate in detecting bombs before they explode. That ticked up to 60 percent in Afghanistan in recent months, Oates said — thanks largely to better local intelligence and aerial surveillance as well as on-the-ground technology — but it's too soon to tell whether this marks a long-term trend.
The agency's future is unclear. While some of Oates' predecessors argued that the agency should be a permanent part of the Pentagon because the fight against roadside bombs is global and ongoing, some in Congress have argued that it should be terminated at the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oates, for his part, said that JIEDDO "is not a permanent organization, and we do not seek to be one."
(This article was reported and written by Peter Cary of the Center for Public Integrity and Nancy A. Youssef of McClatchy. Shashank Bengali of McClatchy contributed. The center is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in Washington. Cary is a freelance writer who formerly headed the investigative reporting team at U.S. News & World Report.) |
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/27/111029/pentagon-spends-billions-to-fight.html#ixzz1Ho7NwC4U |
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wartsttocs
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Joined: 19 May 2009
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:17 am Post subject: |
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2 US-led soldiers injured in Afghanistan
| Quote: | Two US-led soldiers have been wounded after their armored vehicle hit a landmine in western Afghanistan province of Farah, Afghan officials say.
A police source said the incident came overnight when the mine exploded on the way of a joint Afghan-foreign convoy in a village in Farah city, a Press TV correspondent reported Tuesday.
Coalition helicopters deployed the wounded soldiers to the alliance forces in the town center, the source said on condition of anonymity.
In another incident in Farah, the convoy of an Afghan army hit a landmine in a village in the province.
Taliban claims that at least eight Afghan troops were killed in the explosion. Afghan defense ministry, however, refutes the casualty figure.
The security situation continues to deteriorate in war-ravaged Afghanistan with foreign and Afghan forces falling prey to Taliban militants.
The surge in violence comes despite the presence of 150,000 foreign troops in the Asian country.
SB/GHN/HRF |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172116.html |
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wartsttocs
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| Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 12:22 am Post subject: |
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10 NATO tankers damaged in Pakistan
| Quote: | At least 10 NATO oil tankers have been damaged in an attack in Pakistan's Khyber area bordering Afghanistan, Pakistani officials have said.
The incident happened at the NATO supply vehicle hub in Landi Kotal, where the bulk of supplies destined for US-led troops in Afghanistan pass through.
"The attackers damaged 10 oil tankers with mortars and small arms fire, but there was no blaze as the tankers were empty and had returned from Afghanistan after delivering supplies," tribal administration official Iqbal Khan Khattak told AFP.
The drivers had parked up at the terminal on their return journey to stay overnight in nearby hotels, he added.
Three security guards were also beheaded during the attack, local intelligence officials confirmed.
"It is the work of the militants," Khattak replied when asked who could be behind the killings.
NATO vehicles routinely deliver supplies to their forces in Afghanistan using the routes in the region.
Militants have managed to destroy hundreds of NATO tankers and containers in different parts of northwest and southwest Pakistan in the last three years.
AGB/MB |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172540.html |
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wartsttocs
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| Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 12:25 am Post subject: |
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Six US-led soldiers killed in Afghan war
| Quote: | At least half a dozen US-led foreign troops, who are experiencing some of their deadliest days in Afghanistan, have been killed in the eastern province of Kunar.
NATO said on Friday that six soldiers were killed and three others were injured in military operations against the Taliban over the past two days, a Press TV correspondent reported.
The Western military alliance did not reveal the identity or the nationality of the deceased soldiers. However, it claimed that 25 militants were also killed.
The deaths bring to at least 110 the number of the US-led foreign forces killed in Afghanistan so far this year.
Meanwhile, a Taliban spokesman claims that four foreign troops have been killed in a roadside bomb blast in the town of Ghaziabad, in Kunar Province.
He said a NATO tank was also destroyed in the explosion.
The death toll of the US-led forces in 2010 stood at 711, making the year the deadliest for foreign forces in Afghanistan since the start of the war.
The rising number of foreign casualties has stoked opposition to the Afghan war in the NATO member states as well as in other countries that have contributed troops to the mission.
NATO has admitted that the power of militants in Afghanistan is on the rise despite the presence of 150,000 US-led forces in the war-hit country.
JR/HGH/MMN |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172584.html |
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wartsttocs
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| Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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3 US-led soldiers injured in Afghan war
| Quote: | At least three US-led troops have been injured after armed men attacked a NATO camp in the capital Kabul as violence against foreign troops surges in the war-hit country.
Two unidentified gunmen opened fire and detonated their explosives near Camp Phoenix in Kabul, injuring at least three US-led soldiers, a press TV correspondent reported on Saturday.
"Four militants were involved in the latest attack here in Kabul on the US base. It's a strategic base, It's a residential area and in many years, the bases [Camp Phoenix] are surrounding the area…bombers detonated their explosives and this triggered heavy fighting between the militants, and US and Afghan forces there," the correspondent added.
He went on to say that wo bombers wanted to make their way inside the US base but they were shot dead by the Afghan security forces.
"At 06:30 am, we received information that Camp Phoenix was under attack by small arms and RPGs," said the spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
In 2010, As many as 711 foreign troops lost their lives in Afghanistan--an average of two a day-- setting a new annual record, which was by far greater than the annual toll of 521 during 2009.
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has nearly 140,000 troops in Afghanistan, two-thirds of which are from the United States, fighting a war that is approaching its tenth year.
On January 12, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said he sees an increase in bloodshed in Afghanistan as foreign soldiers begin to fire up their offensive against Taliban elements.
"As difficult as it may be to accept, we must prepare ourselves for more violence and more casualties in coming months," he said.
Earlier on Saturday, an Afghan civilian was killed when a bomb targeting the Afghan army went off in the Afghan capital Kabul.
The bomb ripped through a bus carrying Afghan National Army personnel early on Saturday in Pulichakhi area of eastern Kabul, followed by exchanges of fire between attackers and army personnel.
The hike in the number of deaths among US-led foreign troops in tandem with the heavy civilian casualties have given rise to a marked intensification of global opposition to the US-led mission in Afghanistan.
HA/MB |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172677.html |
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wartsttocs
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| Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:38 am Post subject: |
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NATO tanker torched in Pakistan
| Quote: | A group of unidentified armed men have attacked a NATO supply vehicle transporting fuel destined for US-led forces in Afghanistan and set them on fire in Pakistan's Baluchistan province.
The gunmen opened fire on a tanker in Khuzdar district, located 360 kilometers (223 miles) south of the provincial capital of Quetta, as it was traveling from the southern port city of Karachi to the Chaman border crossing on the frontier with neighboring Afghanistan.
The driver and his assistant were injured in the shootout, a Press TV correspondent reported on Saturday.
The assailants later fled the scene. Their whereabouts are unknown.
Police cordoned off the area after the incident and launched a search operation to arrest the perpetrators.
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan militants regularly attack NATO convoys in Pakistan.
The US military and NATO rely heavily on the Pakistani supply route into landlocked Afghanistan.
Militants have staged violent attacks in recent months, torching hundreds of NATO vehicles and containers destined for foreign troops in Afghanistan.
In response, the Pakistani authorities have deployed large contingents of police and military forces on all major arteries in the area to curb the attacks.
Other routes, largely through Russia and the Central Asian states, have proved too costly, both politically and economically.
MP/AGB |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172795.html |
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wartsttocs
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:22 am Post subject: |
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3 US-led troops killed in Afghanistan
| Quote: |
Three more US-led troops have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing to 113 the number of the foreign soldiers killed in the war-weary country in 2011.
A man wearing Afghan police uniform shot two NATO soldiers in Faryab province on Monday, a Press TV correspondent reported.
Initial reports say an individual in an Afghan border police uniform fired on two International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) members inside a compound.
One more US-led soldier was also killed in a roadside bomb explosion in eastern part of the war-ravaged country on Sunday.
The death toll of the US-led forces in 2010 stood at 711, making the year the deadliest for foreign forces in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of the country in 2011.
The rising number of foreign casualties has stoked opposition to the Afghan war among the NATO member states as well as in other countries that have contributed troops to the mission.
NATO has admitted that the power of militants in Afghanistan is on the rise despite the presence of 150,000 US-led forces in the war-hit country.
RZS/HRF |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/173013.html |
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Yuri
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Joined: 28 Jan 2007
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Location: Vancouver, B.C.
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:59 am Post subject: |
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In a case of what goes around........comes around, sometimes the ass-kicking is self-administered:
| Democracy Now! wrote: | U.S. Servicemen Killed by Drone Strike in Afghanistan
NBC News is reporting a U.S. Marine reservist and a U.S. Navy medic were killed in Afghanistan last week when they were hit by a Hellfire missile fired from a U.S. Air Force Predator drone. It is believed that this is the first time that U.S. servicemembers have been killed by a Predator in a friendly fire incident.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/12/headlines
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The question begs: if the Predator 'pilots' can't tell a U.S. Navy medic from a combatant, then how the fook are we to believe that they can tell civilians from 'militants'?
_________________
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Don Smith
VETERAN TRUTHSEEKER
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Location: Puget Sound
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 6:36 am Post subject: |
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Comment by a helicopter door gunner in "Full Metal Jacket";"Anyone who runs is a V.C.Anyone staying place is a well disciplined V.C."
_________________
" A bayonet is a tool with a worker at both ends."- Lenin
Patriotism is a manifestation of the Stockholm Syndrome.
"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."
-Thoreau
"Information is the currency of Democracy." Jefferson |
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wartsttocs
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:45 am Post subject: |
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| I wonder how much "spending" is involved in this little mishap? In the coming year we will find out how many Americans support this kind of "spending", while at the same time, supporting cutting "spending" on social, environmental, and infrastructure programs. My guess is 95 percent or more of voters. |
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wartsttocs
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 10:51 am Post subject: |
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5 US-led soldiers killed in Afghan war
| Quote: | Five US-led soldiers have been killed in an attack on an Afghan army base in eastern Afghanistan amid a surge in attacks against foreign troops in the country.
In a Saturday statement, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the death toll from the attack in eastern Afghanistan, Xinhua news agency reported.
The identities and nationalities of the soldiers killed have not yet been released by the military alliance.
This week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refrained from expounding on a timeline about the US military pullout from war-weary Afghanistan.
"We need to underscore that we are transitioning, not leaving," Clinton said at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in the German capital, Berlin, on Thursday.
At least 1,424 American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of the Asian country began in 2001, according to a recent report by the Associated Press.
Clinton also warned of a "violent spring fighting season" in Afghanistan, saying that the withdrawal of troops will benefit the Taliban as there is the possibility of a rise in the militants' attacks.
In 2010, As many as 711 foreign troops lost their lives in Afghanistan -- an average of two a day -- which is by far greater than the annual toll of 521 during 2009, according to AFP.
HA/HRF |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/175071.html |
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wartsttocs
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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3 US-led troops killed in S Afghanistan
| Quote: | Three more US-led soldiers have been killed in Blasts in southern Afghanistan, bringing the number of foreign troops killed in the war-torn country to over 130 in 2011.
Earlier on Saturday five US-led forces were also killed in an attack on an Afghan army base in eastern Afghanistan.
In a Saturday statement, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the number of casualties caused by the attack in eastern Afghanistan, Xinhua news agency reported.
Over 1,400 American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of the Asian country began in 2001, according to a recent report by the Associated Press.
In 2010, As many as 711 foreign troops lost their lives in Afghanistan -- an average of two a day -- which is by far greater than the previous record annual toll of 521, marked in 2009.
AO/MB |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/175219.html |
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wartsttocs
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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NATO fuel tanker destroyed in Pakistan
| Quote: | Militants in southwestern Pakistan's tribal regions have destroyed another tanker carrying fuel to US-led NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
The attack took place on Saturday, when armed militants riding motorbikes opened fire on the oil tanker near the town of Dera Murad Jamali in the volatile Balochistan province, local police told Press TV.
The attackers then torched the tanker and immediately fled the scene. No fatalities or injuries were reported in the incident.
The US military and NATO rely heavily on the Pakistani supply route into landlocked Afghanistan, where over 140,000 US-led international troops are situated.
However, over the past three years, NATO supply trucks and oil tankers have become targets of frequent attacks by gunmen across Pakistan.
In response, the Pakistani authorities have deployed large contingents of police and military forces on all major arteries in the area to curb the attacks.
However, attacks on NATO vehicles remain unabated.
Militants say the attacks are in response to the unauthorized US drone strikes inside Pakistan.
FF/HJL/MMN |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/175273.html |
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wartsttocs
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 9:55 am Post subject: |
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NATO tankers torched in N Afghanistan
| Quote: | Armed men have attacked NATO oil tankers transporting fuel for US-led forces in north Afghanistan and set them ablaze.
Fuel and other vital supplies for the US military and NATO forces in Afghanistan are mostly transported from Pakistan through a route in tribal regions on Pakistani-Afghan border.
Supplies arrive by sea in Karachi, where security analysts believe most of the Afghan Taliban leadership is now hiding. From there, they must travel in long, exposed convoys, through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwest Pakistan.
Other routes, largely through Russia and the Central Asian states, have proved too costly, both politically and economically.
Militants have staged violent attacks in tribal regions in recent months, torching hundreds of NATO vehicles and containers destined for foreign troops in Afghanistan.
Pro-Taliban militants have also managed to destroy hundreds of NATO tankers and containers in different parts of neighboring Pakistan in the last three years.
Despite the presence of nearly 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, security and calm have never been restored in the country since the 2001 US-led invasion as terror and militancy have become more rampant.
MA/MB |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/176104.html |
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wartsttocs
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2011 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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Afghan insurgents shoot down NATO chopper; 1 dead
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Rahim Faiez, Associated Press – 46 mins ago
| Quote: | KABUL, Afghanistan – Insurgents shot down a NATO helicopter Saturday in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan where fighting has intensified, and one foreign service member was killed, the alliance said.
The U.S.-led military coalition said the death of the service member was related to the chopper crash in Alasay district of Kapisa province, but that the dead trooper was not aboard the aircraft. The only two crew members were recovered alive, it said.
No further details have been disclosed about the crash, which is under investigation.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in a telephone call that Taliban insurgents shot down the helicopter with a rocket. He said other coalition helicopters later flew to the crash site and fired weapons to destroy the wreckage.
Aziz Rahman Tawab, acting provincial governor in Kapisa province, said the helicopter crashed into the side of a mountain.
Aircraft are used extensively in Afghanistan by both NATO and Afghan government forces to transport and supply troops because the terrain is mountainous and roads are few and primitive. In September, a helicopter crash in a rugged area of Zabul province in southern Afghanistan killed nine American troops.
Fighting has escalated in the east as Afghan and coalition forces step up their attacks on insurgents along the Pakistani border and militants retaliate with attacks on pro-government forces and Afghan officials.
Afghan forces killed eight insurgents in a gunbattle Friday in the Pech Valley area of eastern Kunar province, which borders Pakistan, the Afghan Defense Ministry said Saturday.
The Interior Ministry said militants ambushed an Afghan police vehicle on Saturday, killing two policemen and wounding two others in Dara Nur district of Nangarhar province.
Also in the east, a suicide attacker on foot detonated a vest packed with explosives Friday afternoon at the entrance to a building used by education officials in Jayi Maydan district of Khost province, said Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, the provincial police chief. The bomber died in the attack and four people were wounded, including the district education director and a principal, he said.
In the south, the governor's office also reported Saturday that the Afghan National Police arrested six armed insurgents the day before, including three wearing police uniforms, driving a police vehicle in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand.
To counter possible infiltration into the security forces, the U.S.-led coalition — at the Afghan government's request — has trained 220 Afghan soldiers to spot possible Taliban infiltrators, disgruntled soldiers within the ranks and other conditions that could make the force vulnerable to attack, according to the coalition.
The plan is to have 445 soldiers trained in counterintelligence by the end of the year.
Since March 2009, the coalition has recorded 20 incidents where a member of the Afghan security forces or someone wearing one of their uniforms killed coalition forces. Thirty-six coalition troops have died. It is not known how many of the 282,000 members of the Afghan security forces were killed.
The coalition says 10 of the 20 incidents involved the impersonation of an Afghan policeman or soldier; the causes of the other 10 incidents were attributed to combat stress or unknown reasons. |
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wartsttocs
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Joined: 19 May 2009
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2011 10:40 am Post subject: |
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Afghan blast kills 2 more US-led troops
| Quote: | A bomb attack has claimed the lives of two US-led soldier in southern Afghanistan as foreign forces face a climbing number of deadly attacks in the war-ravaged country.
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Sunday that two more foreign soldiers were killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, bringing to four the number of US-led force casualties in a single day, Xinhua reported.
"Two International Security Assistance Force service members died following an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in southern Afghanistan yesterday," an ISAF statement said.
However, the statement did not reveal the nationalities of the victims, saying "It is ISAF policy to defer casualty identification procedures to the relevant national authorities."
Separately, a US-led soldier was killed on Saturday when an ISAF helicopter crashed in Afghanistan's eastern Kapisa province as another soldier lost his life in a militant attack east of the war-ravaged country.
More than 130 US-led soldiers have so far been killed in Afghanistan in the current year.
As the US-led force casualties persistently climb in Afghanistan, public opinion in the United States and other Western countries is increasingly turning against the Afghan war.
MSH/MB |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/176395.html |
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wartsttocs
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2011 10:29 pm Post subject: |
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Afghan pilot kills eight US troops at Kabul airport
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Eight US troops and a US contractor have been killed by an Afghan air force pilot at Kabul airport in an apparent argument, US officials say.
The incident took place at a facility used by the Afghan air force at about 1100 local time (0630 GMT), the Afghan defence ministry said.
The pilot was also killed in the exchange.
The incident is the deadliest of a number of recent attacks on foreigners by Afghan security personnel.
"We can confirm there was small-arms fire during this incident," said Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) spokesman Maj Tim James.
US officials said the eight Isaf troops and one foreign contractor were all American, AP news agency said.
Witnesses reported hearing sirens and seeing a heavy military presence near the facility, which generally has tight security.
A senior Afghan security official told the BBC the pilot's name was Gul Ahmad, and he came from the Tarakhel area of Kabul.
He was suffering from "mental illness", and either got into a fight with his foreign colleagues or planned the attack after being recruited by the Taliban, the official said.
A spokesman for the Afghan Air Corps, Col Bahader, told AP the shooting was in an operations room of the Afghan Air Corps.
"Suddenly, in the middle of the meeting, shooting started," Col Bahader said. "After the shooting started, we saw a number of Afghan army officers and soldiers running out of the building. Some were even throwing themselves out of the windows to get away."
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the incident in a text sent to AP but the authorities have not confirmed any insurgent activity.
President Hamid Karzai and senior Isaf commanders condemned the shooting.
The head of the Nato training mission in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General William Caldwell said the programme had "suffered a tragic loss from an attack, which occurred this morning, resulting in the deaths of nine coalition trainers".
Correspondents say rapid recruitment into the Afghan military has raised fears of Taliban infiltration into the police and army.
Nato's exit strategy for Afghanistan involves progressively handing over to the local security forces.
Until now the deadliest of the recent attacks on foreign troops was last November when an Afghan policeman killed six US soldiers.
And two Nato soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan border policeman in northern Faryab province on 4 April, local officials said.
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says foreign troops broadly but not totally trust their Afghan colleagues and feel they have to keep half an eye on them.
The attackers are sometimes actually members of the Afghan security forces, and sometimes insurgents impersonating servicemen. |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13206560 |
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wartsttocs
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Joined: 19 May 2009
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Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 8:27 am Post subject: |
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3 US-led soldiers killed in Afghanistan
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) says three US-led foreign soldiers have been killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan.
NATO announced on Friday that two service members were killed as a bomb exploded in the south and another died in an attack by pro-Taliban militants, the Associated Press reported.
Today's deaths raise the total number of casualties for foreign troops in April to 48, compared with 33 killed during the same time last year.
In 2010, US and NATO reinforcement forces were able to route some Taliban militants from their hideouts in the south and the east. However, the militants have stepped up their attacks in other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in US-led airstrikes and ground operations in various parts of Afghanistan over the past few months, with Afghans becoming more and more outraged over the seemingly endless number of deadly assaults.
Western public opinion is growing increasingly tired of the war. Deaths of civilians in NATO and US attacks have also fueled tensions between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western allies.
MA/MB |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/177262.html |
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wartsttocs
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Joined: 19 May 2009
Posts: 2088
Location: the woods of new hampshire
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| Posted: Wed May 04, 2011 12:26 am Post subject: |
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3 NATO tankers destroyed in Pakistan
| Quote: | Pro-Taliban militants in northwest Pakistan have destroyed three oil tankers transporting fuel to US-led foreign forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
One vehicle was destroyed in the Torkham area of the Khyber agency and the other two were blown up in a bomb blast in Alu Masjid in incidents that took place late on Tuesday. The explosion also caused damage to nearby buildings.
However, no casualties have been reported.
On Monday, four Pakistani police officers were killed and six others were injured after gunmen attacked vehicles carrying oil for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants have routinely attacked NATO containers in northwest and southwest Pakistan for the past three years.
Pakistan is the only route through which supplies can be sent to NATO troops in landlocked Afghanistan. Other routes, largely through Russia and the Central Asian states, have proved too costly, both politically and economically.
But militants have destroyed several hundred NATO containers over the past few months, claiming the attacks are in retaliation for the unauthorized US drone strikes that have claimed the lives of many civilians in Pakistan.
MA/HGL |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/178118.html |
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