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- Taleban 'free' French aid worker
- Afghanistan's Taliban say French hostage freed
- US admits Afghan civilians killed
- Suicide raid hurts 2 U.S. troops in Afghanistan
- 10 Taliban militants killed in S. Afghanistan
- Sixteen dead in new Afghan violence
- Kabul detains Canadian citizen
- Two Afghan refugees camps in Balochistan being closed
- Pakistan vows to lift ban on Afghan TV channels
Friday, 11 May 2007 BBC News
French aid worker kidnapped by the Taleban in Afghanistan on 3 April has been released, a Taleban spokesman has told the BBC.
There is no word on the fate of three Afghans also held by the group.
The Taleban spokesman said the freed man was handed over to the Red Cross in the province of Kandahar.
There has been no word from the French government about the release. A French woman kidnapped at the same time was released two weeks ago.
The aid workers were employed by the French group Terre d'enfance.
It is not commenting on the reports at present.
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Afghanistan's Taliban say French hostage freed
May 11, 2007
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban movement on Friday freed a French aid worker it had kidnapped last month, a spokesman for the group said.
Qari Mohammad Yousuf said the Taliban handed over Eric Damfreville to tribal elders in the southern province of Kandahar who then submitted him to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Damfreville worked for Terre d'Enfrance, an agency helping children in southern Afghanistan.
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US admits Afghan civilians killed
Friday, 11 May 2007 BBC News
US-led forces have admitted civilians were killed in fighting with Taleban insurgents earlier this week in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.
"There are confirmed reports of civilian casualties; however, it is unknown at this time how many," the coalition said in a statement.
It said up to 20 wounded villagers had been treated by coalition forces.
Local officials say at least 21 people died when US-led forces called in air strikes against militants near Sangin.
It is the third time in recent months that US special forces, who operate outside Nato remit, have been accused of causing significant civilian casualties.
Public discontent in Afghanistan is growing over the rising number of civilian casualties and the government's failure to improve the lives of most Afghans.
'Human shields'
The US military say they called in air strikes on Tuesday night after US special forces and Afghan troops came under mortar, rocket and small arms fire while on patrol 25km (15 miles) north of Sangin.
The aircraft destroyed "three enemy command and control compounds", spokesmen said on Wednesday. They said troops had killed a "significant" number of militants.
Locals said villages had been hit, and children and women were among the dead.
One villager quoted by Reuters news agency denied Taleban fighters had used them as "human shields".
The US-led coalition statement on Friday said a joint inquiry into the incident was being conducted with the Afghan army.
It said a wounded child had died after being evacuated by the coalition for treatment.
Foreign forces and Afghan troops are trying to drive militants from the lawless, opium-producing region of Sangin.
The rising number of civilian casualties there and elsewhere in the country is putting President Hamid Karzai under increasing pressure.
On Tuesday, the Afghan Senate urged him to open direct talks with local Taleban militants, and for attacks on them to stop.
Earlier that day, the US military had said it was "deeply ashamed" over the killings of 19 Afghan civilians by US Marines in early March.
Correspondents say that casualties in remote battle sites in Afghanistan are almost impossible to verify.
Taleban fighters are often accused of seeking shelter in peoples' homes, leading to civilian casualties, and it is often difficult to determine if people killed in such air strikes were militants or civilians.
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Suicide raid hurts 2 U.S. troops in Afghanistan
May 11, 2007
KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber rammed his car into a convoy of U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan on Friday, wounding at least two U.S. soldiers, government and coalition officials said.
The troops cordoned off the site of the attack which took place on a road in Urgun district of southeastern Paktika province, provincial officials said.
Both NATO and U.S.-led troops operate in the area and a Taliban spokesman said the bomber was a member of the militant group which has stepped up its attacks against foreign and government forces in recent months.
An official for the U.S. military said at least two American soldiers were wounded in the attack
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10 Taliban militants killed in S. Afghanistan
Xinhua / May 11, 2007
A coalition air strike killed 10 Taliban insurgents in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, a local official told Xinhua Friday.
Taliban fighters ambushed a patrol of the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces in Sangin district late Thursday, district chief Azatullah Khan said.
The forces fought back and called in coalition air support, which killed 10 militants, he added.
Helmand has been a hotbed of Taliban rebels, who attack Afghan and foreign troops frequently.
Due to rising Taliban-linked insurgency, over 1,200 persons, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed in Afghanistan this year.
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Sixteen dead in new Afghan violence
Fri May 11, 7:14 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Four policemen and a dozen Taliban were killed in fresh violence in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
Ten militants were killed when war planes bombed a village in the southern province of Helmand, a district governor said.
The air strike was in Sangin district, where provincial authorities said 21 civilians were killed in coalition bombing raids targeting the Taliban late Tuesday.
Afghan and coalition forces estimate a "significant number of Taliban fighters" were killed, the US-led coalition said in a statement Friday. It said there were civilian casualties but the number was being investigated.
In a separate incident, four policemen and two more insurgents were killed when fighting erupted late Thursday after a group of the extremist militants attacked a police post, provincial police chief Ali Shah Ahmadi told AFP.
"Four police were martyred, two police were wounded and two Taliban bodies were left at the battlefield," Ahmadi said.
Four suspects were arrested in a follow-up operation on Friday, he said.
Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said his group was responsible.
Remnants of the ultra-Islamic Taliban regime have waged a bloody insurgency since their ouster in a US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
The insurgency has led to thousands of deaths.
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Kabul detains Canadian citizen
24-year-old man who lived in Calgary allegedly attended militant training camp in Pakistan
GRAEME SMITH AND COLIN FREEZE
With a report from Bill Curry in Ottawa
The Globe and Mail (Canada) / May 11, 2007
SANGIN DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN; TORONTO -- Afghan police have detained a Canadian citizen on suspicion that he attended a militant training camp, sources say, marking the first time in almost five years that a Canadian has been arrested in Afghanistan for possible involvement with the insurgency.
Police took the young man into custody at a bus station in Kabul within the past few days, sources say, and Afghan authorities continue to hold him for investigation at a compound belonging to the Ministry of Interior. His name was not released, but he was identified as a 24-year-old of Pakistani origin who previously lived in Calgary. He was carrying a Canadian passport at the time of his arrest.
The Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa confirmed that a Canadian had been arrested, and said that embassy staff have consular access.
The man has not been formally charged, but police allege he attended a militant camp in Waziristan, a lawless border region of Pakistan believed to serve as a hideout for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
The bearded man was behaving suspiciously in a way that attracted attention, a source said. "He got off a bus, and he stuck out."
The detainee seems to speak at least a little Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, the source said. It's unlikely he was visiting relatives in Afghanistan because he does not appear to have family in the country.
A bitter enmity has developed between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as the latter accuses its neighbour of fomenting the Taliban insurgency, and Pakistanis sometimes complain of unfair treatment and profiling by Afghan police.
Afghan authorities, for their part, say the most fanatical suicide bombers and other insurgents are usually trained in Pakistan's border areas, beyond the legal reach of Kabul or its NATO allies.
It has long been acknowledged that Waziristan is a magnet for jihadists. The mountainous region is home to fundamentalist tribes that have provided safe haven to al-Qaeda, Taliban and sundry others who fled the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
Pakistan frequently promises it will rein in the restive region, and hundreds of militants have died in recent weeks as the government has flooded Waziristan with thousands of troops. "We are fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda in the mountains of North Waziristan, South Waziristan," Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told a U.S. interviewer last year.
The area has been significant for Canada in the past. It was in South Waziristan that the Arab fugitive known to al-Qaeda cohorts and international intelligence agencies as "the Canadian" met his end.
Pakistani infantry soldiers teamed up with a helicopter gunship crew to hunt down and slay Ahmed Said Khadr and seven others in 2003. Years earlier, Mr. Khadr had moved his family from Canada to Afghanistan, where they once lived in a compound with Osama bin Laden.
Members of the Khadr family crossed over to Pakistan with al-Qaeda figures after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. A year before the patriarch of the family was killed, then-15-year-old son Omar Khadr was dispatched by his father back toward the front lines, where he was wounded and captured in a deadly Afghan gun battle with U.S. soldiers.
Omar Khadr has spent the past five years in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, held on charges that he is an enemy combatant who murdered a soldier with a grenade. His trial is set to begin this summer.
The organizers of the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings that killed 52 people are understood to have attended a terrorist summit in Waziristan before carrying out that attack.
Last week, a mujahedeen fighter turned Afghan opposition politician told an interviewer with the conservative American Jamestown Foundation think tank that Waziristan "is in flames" and added that "the people of these districts, men and women, are now mostly pro-al-Qaeda."
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Two Afghan refugees camps in Balochistan being closed
via Frontier Post (Pakistan) / May 11, 2007
QUETTA, (NNI): The Government of Pakistan has announced that Jungle Pir Alizai and Girdi Jungle camps in Balochistan will be closed in 2007. Jungle Pir Alizai will be closed by June 15 and Girdi Jungle will be closed by August 31. There is no option to stay in the camps. Affected Afghans have two options to voluntarily repatriate to Afghanistan with UNHCR assistance or to relocate to Ghazgai Minara camp in Loralai district of Balochistan. The UNHCR will only assist registered Afghans with Proof of Registration (PoR) cards.
Unregistered Afghans with no PoR cards will be subject to the law of the land. Afghans who wish to repatriate should approach the UNHCR scheduling centres in Ghousabad or Sabzal Road, or approach the Baleli voluntary repatriation centre (VRC) on the Quetta-Chaman Road. They must bring the PoR cards of the repatriating family members and two copies of family photo in colour. At the VRC, repatriating family members will be de-registered at NADRA's point and their PoR cards will be invalidated. All those above five years of age must pass the IRIS test in order to receive UNHCR assistance in Afghanistan.
The return package offers an average of US$100 per person, depending on the distance to the area of origin. Baleli VRC is open daily from 07:30 am to 3:30 pm except Thursdays and Fridays. Afghans, who are not repatriating for the moment and opt for relocation, will be relocated to Ghazgai Minara camp in Loralai district. Those wishing to relocate must give their names to the district administrators and staff of the Commissioner for Afghan Refugees (CAR) in their camps as soon as possible. A copy of this list should be sent to UNHCR. UNHCR will provide transport of persons and their possessions.
A medical escort for PoR holders will be provided enroute to Ghazgai Minara camp. There will be a team to receive them at the camp and to give them the relocation package, which includes a hot meal and water, basic health screening, tents, picks and shovels. Plastic sheets will be distributed as needed. Latrines will also be set up in the reception area. The camp is 345 km away from Jungle Pir Alizai camp and 675 km from Girdi Jungle camp. Ghazgai Minara camp is currently home to 392 registered families with some 2,500 Afghans. Most work as daily wage labourers in farms and coalmines while the rest run small businesses. Facilities in the camp will be made available, including water, health care and education.
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Pakistan vows to lift ban on Afghan TV channels
Reported by Pakhtun Sahar
Translated & edited by S. Mudassir Ali Shah
ISLAMABAD, May 9 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Pakistan's federal minister for information and broadcasting has assured his country will lift a ban on Afghan television channels.
Muhammad Ali Durrani held out the assurance at a meeting with Ihsanullah Arinzai, head of the Ariana TV channel, in Islamabad on Wednesday. Saeed Haideri, advisor to the Sindh chief minister, was also present on the occasion.
The minister, who promised to convey the visiting delegations request to higher authorities, said efforts would be made to enable the Afghan TV channels to work in a free environment.
At the Ankara summit, presidents of the two countries decided to eschew releasing provocative statements and news against each other, recalled Durrani while referring to the tension-defusing meeting between Gen. Musharraf and Karzai.
In a chat with Pajhwok Afghan News, Ariana TV chief Arinzai said nobody should take undue benefit of media freedom. Fanning tensions or difference served no ones interest, he observed.
Around two million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan have every right to know what is going on in their homeland, said Arinzai, who believed that the ban on Afghan TV channels ran counter to the freedom of expression.
Apart from a trip to the Ministry of Information and Culture in Islamabad, the Afghan delegates also visited offices of Pakistans private TV channels including ARY, Indus and Geo in the southern port city of Karachi.
In Peshawar, officials of the state-controlled Pakistan Television (PTV) vowed to help the Afghan channels in Pashto dramas. Details of the proposed support were not immediately available.
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