By Sayed Salahuddin Sayed Salahuddin –

Wed Feb 4, 2009, 8:42 am ET

KABUL (Reuters) –

With the reduction of war attacks in Iraq, (Muslim fighters) were now flooding into Afghanistan to join Taliban fighters battling Afghan and (NATO occupation forces), the Afghan defense minister said Wednesday.

There was a 33 percent rise in (resistance) attacks in Afghanistan in 2008, according to NATO-led forces.

War attacks is expected to rise further in 2009 as Washington prepares to send up to 25,000 more troops into new areas of the southern Pashtun heartlands.

Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said there were about 15,000 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan but their numbers were being swelled by (Muslim fighters) moving in from Iraq.

"There have been engagements ... in 2008, and in some of these engagements, actually 60 percent of the total force which we have encountered were (Muslim) fighters," he said. Wardak was speaking after he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai held talks with NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, U.S. General John Craddock.

The talks focused on training and equipping the Afghan army, which the U.S. military aims to increase from some 80,000 troops now to 134,000 in 2012, the planned deployment of the extra U.S. soldiers and ways to reduce civilians casualties, Wardak said.

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to approve as early as this week plans to send up to 17,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan to add to the 36,000 American soldiers already battling Taliban fighters in the country.

The additional U.S. forces will focus on hitting Taliban communication lines and their cross-border infiltration into Afghanistan from Pakistan. The extra troops will reduce reliance on air strikes, cutting civilian deaths, Wardak said.

Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces have eroded support for (the US-backed) Karzai and the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan more than seven years since the Taliban's removal.

Afghanistan says Kabul suicide gang smashed

by Waheedullah Massoud Waheedullah Massoud –

Tue Feb 3, 2009, 7:21 am ET

KABUL (AFP) –

Afghanistan's intelligence agency said Tuesday it had smashed a Pakistani-led group behind six deadly suicide bombings in Kabul over the last two years, including blasts outside the German and US embassies.

The National Directorate of Security (NDS) told reporters it rounded up 17 suspects, including a Pakistani alleged to be the ringleader, days after the January 17 suicide car bomb near the German embassy that killed five people.

"They all have confessed to their involvement in the suicide attacks and the case is under investigation," NDS spokesman Sayed Ansari told a news conference in the Afghan capital.

The attacks -- dating from March 2007 to the January 17 attack near the German embassy and a US military base -- killed at least 20 Afghan civilians and wounded more than 120 others, Ansari said.

They also caused casualties among foreign soldiers but he could not say how many.

The agency handed out a DVD showing some of the suspects admitting to involvement in the attacks, including the Pakistani.

Ansari said the group was affiliated to the Haqqani network, a Taliban wing led by the Haqqani family, and Harakat-ul-Mujahideen, an Islamic militant network based in Pakistan.

"The group is trained, financed and formed outside Afghan borders in Pakistan by the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen and Haqqani terrorist networks," Ansari said.

Harakat-ul-Mujahideen is classified as a "terrorist" organisation by the United States. Defence analysis group Jane's says the outfit has conducted raids on Indian security positions and is active in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The suspects, aged between 23 and 55, were all Afghans except for their alleged leader, a 23-year-old man identified as Pakistani national and named only as Yasar, the official said.

The men performed various tasks related to the attacks, from fixing bombs into vehicles to housing the suicide attackers, and collecting information about damage and casualties at the scene after the blasts.

They were allegedly involved in the January 17 bombing, a November 27 suicide attack near the US embassy that killed four civilians, and four other blasts in the east of Kabul.

Ansari said the intelligence agency was looking for three other men in connection with the "dangerous network".

The arrests come in addition to three others announced by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force days after the German embassy bombing, the spokesman said.

NATIO (ISAF) spokespersons said it arrested the three in Kabul and the adjacent province of Logar, where another suspect was killed after he tried to attack the troops.

The January suicide bombing was the first in the capital this year.

Suicide bombings have been a regular insurgent tactic in Afghanistan since 2005, with the number of such attacks growing every year. They are most often claimed by the Taliban, which was in government between 1996 and 2001.

The Pentagon said in a report to Congress on Monday that the period between spring and summer 2008 marked the worst war attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban were removed from government in the 2001 US-led invasion.

Taliban war attacks rose 33 percent last year and assaults along the country's major highway increased by 37 percent compared to 2007, it said.