7 Afghani army soldiers were killed or wounded in Kandahar

Yesterday noon at approximately 11:00am, The mujahedin of the Islamic Emirate carried out a direct attack on the patrol of puppet army patrol in Shako dara area of Arghistan district of Kandahar Province. As a result, the 4 soldiers were killed 3 wounded .The mujahedin took as booty the weapons and ammunition of the dead soldiers.  

Reported by Qari Yousuf Ahmadi

13 Afghani army soldiers killed and 3 vehicle destroyed in Ghazni

 Today at noon 13-05-2009, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ambushed a convoy of Afghani army on Kabul Kandahar highway in Muqer district of Ghazi province. In the ambush 3 vehicles was destroyed, 13 soldiers were killed.

Reported by Zabihullah Mujahid

2 US military vehicles of enemy destroyed in Wardak

  Today 13-05-2009 at approximately 6:00 pm local time, The mujahedin of the Islamic Emirate carried out an armed attack on an American-Afghani forces convoy in Jaghato District of Wardak Province .in attack 1tank of American and a military vehicles of gourd police of the convoy  were destroyed .

 The attack that took place as an ambush 4 American and 3 Afghani soldiers were killed few wounded.  The mujahedin did not suffer any casualties in the attack. 

Reported by Zabihullah Mujahid

Afghan police: 11 Taliban fighters killed in south

 By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Amir Shah

KABUL –

Overnight fighting between Afghan police and insurgents in southern Afghanistan left 11 Taliban fighters dead, officials said. A NATO pilot was injured after his jet crashed following takeoff in the same region.

Taliban fighters attacked the police post in Paktika province Wednesday evening and fighting raged for several hours, said Gen. Dawlat Khan, the provincial police chief. Eventually, international forces called in an airstrike to help the officers.

Eleven Taliban fighters but no police were killed in the fighting, he said.

In the southern Kandahar province, a British jet crashed on takeoff Thursday due to mechanical failure, said Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Hall, a spokesman for the NATO-led force. The pilot was wounded after ejecting from the aircraft in Kandahar airfield, he said.

"There were no other passengers on board. At present we are not aware of any other casualties," Hall said.

There was no suggestion of Taliban involvement, he said.

U.S. and NATO-led troops rely heavily on aircraft for support while conducting operations in Afghanistan's rugged southern province, where a lack of roads makes movement of support troops difficult. The area is also the heartland of the Taliban-led insurgency where thousands of new U.S. troops will join the fight later this year.

As the fight against the militants heats up, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner pledged increased financial support for police and health care following a meeting with President Hamid Karzai on Thursday in Kabul, the presidential palace said in a statement.

France has 3,300 troops in Afghanistan. Of those, 2,800 are part of the NATO-led force — a third of the level of Britain's commitment and one-tenth the size of the American force.

France has rejected calls for more troops but earlier said it will quadruple its civilian aid to Afghanistan to 40 million euros ($55 million) from the current 10 million euros.

President Barack Obama has urged European allies to come up with more firepower for Afghanistan, while France is seeking to use its "soft power" instead, seeking to build infrastructure and train police.

Afghan police, who are not as well armed or trained as army troops, are easy targets for militants.

In southern Kandahar province, police officers were again the target of an attack Thursday morning, when a suicide car bomber struck a police station in Kandahar province's Spinboldak district. Gen. Abdul Raziq, the border police district commander, said four officers were wounded in the blast. The Interior Ministry said a civilian was also wounded.

The explosion killed the car bomber but there were no other deaths, Raziq said.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to The Associated Press.

Spinboldak is in the southeastern corner of Afghanistan, an area where the Taliban often wield more control than the government. Many of the 21,000 additional U.S. troops deploying to Afghanistan this summer will spread out across the south as the U.S. tries to regain control of a war that it once thought it had won.

This week, Obama put his stamp on the bloody eight-year conflict by replacing the general in charge of the effort and installing a new ambassador. The Obama administration hopes the leadership shake-up will help reverse the militants' momentum.

On Wednesday, a gunbattle between police and Taliban in western Badghis province left one officer dead, said Ekrammuddin Yawar, the regional police chief. He said he had reports of Taliban deaths as well, but did not have a figure.

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Associated Press writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

Suicide bomb kills 7, wounds 21 in Afghanistan

 By Rahim Faiez And Heidi Vogt,

Associated Press Writers –

Wed May 13, 2009, 4:05 pm ET

KABUL –

A suicide car bomber killed seven people and wounded 21 others Wednesday outside a U.S. military base in the same part of eastern Afghanistan where Taliban fighters stormed government buildings a day earlier, police said.

The Taiban fighters' attacks in Khost, near the tumultuous border with Pakistan, come as the U.S. makes military leadership changes in Afghanistan that demonstrate a clear break from Bush-era appointees.

In Wednesday's attack, a vehicle drove up to the first gate outside Camp Salerno on the edge of Khost and exploded, said police spokesman Wazir Pacha. U.S. forces confirmed the attack, saying four Afghan security guards were killed and 12 wounded.

There were no casualties among international troops, said Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, a U.S. military spokeswoman.

On Tuesday, 11 Taliban suicide bombers struck government buildings in Khost, sparking gunbattles with U.S. and Afghan forces that killed 20 people and wounded three Americans.

Military analysts say such coordinated attacks are a result of training by Pakistani militants and al-Qaida fighters. In the last year, teams of Taliban militants have launched multipronged assaults on government centers in Kabul, Kandahar and Helmand's capital.

The stepped up attacks came an Afghan lawmaker said 95 children were among 140 people killed in a U.S.-Taliban clash earlier this month. The U.S. military disputed those numbers, saying condolence payments to the bereaved offered an incentive to exaggerate the death toll in the May 4-5 clash in western Farah province.

U.S. military officials also questioned that no militants were listed despite initial reports from Afghan officials that 25 Taliban were killed.

A list of the dead, with names and ages, was compiled by an Afghan government commission based on the testimony of villagers, said Obaidullah Helali, a lawmaker from Farah and a member of the government's investigative team.

He said condolence payments were delivered Wednesday to the victims' families — $2,000 for the dead and $1,000 for the wounded. There were 25 people who were wounded, Helali said.

U.S. military spokesman Col. Greg Julian disputed the figures, saying "there is no physical proof that can substantiate" them. The U.S. has refused to say how many people it thinks died in the clashes.

Julian said a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation team was taken to three different grave sites a day after the clash — one with four mounds, one with 22 mounds and one mass grave that contained an unknown number of bodies.

"The locals couldn't decide among themselves whether it was 19 or 69 in that mass grave," Julian said, adding that the dirt displaced from the mass grave seemed to indicate far fewer than 69 bodies were buried there.

This week, President Barack Obama put his stamp on the increasingly bloody eight-year war in Afghanistan by replacing the general in charge of the effort and installing a new ambassador.

The Obama administration hopes the leadership shake-up will help reverse the militants' momentum. Taliban and other insurgent fighters have increased their attacks the last three years and now control wide swaths of territory.

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Associated Press Writer Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul contributed to this report.