Two killed in Afghanistan market blast

Wed Dec 10, 12:31 am ET

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) –

A bomb exploded in a market in southern Afghanistan killing two civilians, including a child aged seven, and wounding nine others, police said Wednesday.

The device went off Tuesday in the centre of a market north of Tarin Kowt, the capital of Oruzgan province, provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat told AFP.

"The bombing took place around noon in a marketplace in the north of the city. A bomb exploded among the crowd," he said.

"A seven-year-old child and an adult were killed and nine other civilians, including four children, wounded, but their lives are not in danger."

He said two people had been arrested for "this cowardly attack... done by the enemies of Afghanistan," a term used to refer to insurgents fighting the Western-backed Kabul government.

Taliban militants, who are well implanted in Oruzgan province, have stepped up their insurgency in the past two years despite the presence of around 70,000 NATO and US troops in the country.

They were driven out of power by a US-led coalition in late 2001 following the September 11 terror attacks that year against the United States.

US-led air raid kills Afghan civilian and six police: force

Wed Dec 10, 10:17 am ET

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) –

Six police and a civilian were killed Wednesday when US-led forces targeting a Taliban commander bombed a police station in southern Afghanistan, the force and a local official said.

The bomb hit from the air just before dawn and "totally destroyed" the police station in the troubled province of Zabul, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Jailani Khan told AFP.

"Six policemen were killed. A civilian man was killed in a nearby house," Khan told AFP. "We don't know how it happened. An investigation is ongoing."

The US force in Afghanistan later issued a statement regretting the incident and describing it as a "tragic case of mistaken identity on both parts."

It said coalition forces were conducting an operation against an armed Taliban fighter when they came under fire from a nearby building.

"Coalition forces engaged those firing with small arms fire and coalition aircraft. It was later determined those firing on the force were ANP (Afghan National Police)," the statement said.

"Coalition forces deeply regret the incident of mistaken fire. Initial reports indicate this was a tragic case of mistaken identity on both parts," said Colonel Jerry O'Hara, US Forces Afghanistan spokesman in the statement.

Coalition forces have launched a joint investigation with Afghan authorities into the incident.

Civilians and Afghan security forces are often the unintended victims of raids by international forces targeting Taliban and other fighters.

Nine Afghan soldiers were killed on October 22 when helicopters from the US-led force bombed them in a similar incident in the eastern province of Khost, on the border with Pakistan, where the Islamic rebels are active.

About 70,000 international military forces including those of NATO are stationed in Afghanistan to fight a Taliban-led insurgency launched in 2001.

President Hamid Karzai's government has repeatedly called on the forces to review their rules of operations to avoid such incidents, warning they serve only to turn Afghans against international efforts here.

In August this year, more than 90 civilians, most of them children, were killed in an air raid by the US-led forces against Taliban-linked fighters in the western province of Herat.

US president-elect Barack Obama has vowed to send more troops to the war-ravaged nation to defeat the insurgency that many see undermining US and its other Western allies efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.

Afghan police killed in airstrike blunder

updated 5:42 a.m. EST, Wed December 10, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) --

A coalition warplane bombed an Afghan police outpost during a battle with suspected Taliban fighters early Wednesday, killing six officers in what a U.S. military spokesman called "a tragic case of mistaken identity."

"Coalition forces deeply regret the incident of mistaken fire," Colonel Jerry O'Hara, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, said in a statement outlining the attack.

At least one other Afghan died in the incident, which occurred about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Kandahar in Zabul province, the U.S. military reported.

Among the dead was the commander of an Afghan national police detachment, while 11 other police officers were wounded, said Gholam Jailani Sarahi, the province's deputy police chief.

The U.S. military put the number of wounded at 13.

The U.S. command in Kabul said its raid was aimed at a "known insurgent commander" in Zabul, one of the hotspots in the seven-year-old war in Afghanistan -- the original front in the war on the al Qaeda terrorist network and its Taliban allies, launched after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

During the raid, an armed fighter holed up in a building took on coalition troops and was killed. Then the allies began taking rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire from a nearby compound, prompting the airstrike.

They later found those firing on them were Afghan police from the compound.

"Initial reports indicate this was a tragic case of mistaken identity on both parts," O'Hara said.

Sarahi said Taliban fighters had fired rockets at the police post, located near the provincial capital Qalat. The U.S. military said a joint investigation was being conducted with Afghan military and police officials.

NATO kills Taliban commander in targeted operation

Posted on Tue, Dec. 09, 2008 10:42 PM

By FISNIK ABRASHI

The Associated Press

Mohammad Sajjad Rows of destroyed Humvees and military trucks are seen at the Portward Logistic Terminal in Peshawar, Pakistan, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2008. Militants blasted their way into two transport terminals in Pakistan on Sunday and torched more than 160 vehicles destined for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, in the biggest assault yet on a vital military supply line.

NATO and Afghan forces killed a Taliban commander during a targeted operation just south of Kabul in a province militant fighters have poured into this year, the NATO-led force said Tuesday.