Two German
journalists shot dead in Afghanistan
KABUL—Unidentified gunmen shot dead two German journalists in northern
Afghanistan in the early hours of Saturday, the interior ministry said.
The two, a man and a woman, were shot in their tent in the province of
Baghlan at about 1:20 am, said a spokesman for the interior minstry
which handles police affairs.
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is alive
and leading the anti-government insurgency from inside Afghanistan, a
purported top spokesman for the militant chief said Saturday. “Mullah
Omar has been in Afghanistan and still is in Afghanistan and will remain
here to lead the jihad (holy war) against the American troops,” said a
man claiming to be Taliban spokesman Abdul-Hai Mutmaen. Mutmaen told AFP
in a satellite telephone call from an undisclosed location that that the
Taliban and Al-Qaeda chiefs had not seen each other since the toppling
of the Taliban regime.
“Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar separated from each other. Each of them
took their own destiny and have not seen each other since 2001,” he
said.
“We have spiritual sympathy with each other but we are not in touch. Our
resistance is a pure Afghan resistance.”
He also rejected claims by Afghan officials that most insurgency-linked
attacks in Afghanistan are carried out by insurgents trained in Pakistan
with support from fundamentalist elements there. The fighters are based
within Afghanistan and the Taliban considers Pakistan as “our second
enemy,” he said.
“Pakistan, as an ally of the United States, is as bad as the Afghan
puppet government. We are here and fighting here. No one is helping us —
it’s an Afghan resistance,” he said.
Meanwhile, an insurgent ambush in southern Afghanistan killed a foreign
soldier Saturday and the NATO-led force was struck by its first suicide
attack in the east since taking command there three days earlier.
The latest violence in a bloody Taliban insurgency came exactly five
years after the international offensive that toppled the hardliners from
government was launched with aerial strikes on October 7, 2001. British
Prime Minister Tony Blair meanwhile acknowledged that the going in
Afghanistan had been “very tough”, pledging his government would provide
the resources needed to confront the battle-hardened militants. An
improvised bomb struck troops with NATO’s International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) in the southern province of Kandahar early
Saturday and insurgents then opened fire on them, an ISAF statement
said.
“One of the soldiers was wounded and later died of injuries sustained.
One vehicle was also damaged,” it said.
ISAF does not comment on the nationalities of its casualties until the
information has been released by the home country.
About 2,300 Canadian soldiers are based in Kandahar and patrol Panjwayi.
ISAF and Afghan forces wrapped up their biggest joint anti-Taliban
operation in the Panjwayi area near Kandahar city two weeks ago,
declaring success against entrenched militants.
Officials said hundreds of rebels were killed and the rest driven out of
the area, now the focus of reconstruction efforts ISAF hopes will
persuade villagers to expel militants.
Hours after the ambush, a suicide car bomb exploded near an ISAF patrol
on the outskirts of the eastern city of Khost, causing minor damage to a
vehicle, police said.
ISAF confirmed the attack but could not immediately say if it was a
suicide blast.
The 37-nation ISAF took charge of foreign troops in Khost and other
provinces in the east on Thursday, replacing the US-led coalition.
Suicide attacks in particular have soared during the past year with more
than 90 recorded by the United Nations compared to 21 for the whole of
last year.
More than 100 foreign soldiers have been killed in hostile action here
this year. This compares to just over 70 killed in hostile action last
year, according to an AFP count based on figures from official sources
published on the www.icasualties.org website.
Afghan police reported meanwhile that they had killed an insurgent
commander and Taliban-era governor of the central province of Bamiyan,
famous for the massive ancient statues of the Buddha that the extremists
blew up in 2001.
Mullah Ibrahim Sabawoon was killed with another militant on Thursday
when they refused to surrender to police while travelling in the
southern province of Ghazni on a motorbike, police told AFP.
“As our unit encountered them, they were asked to surrender but they
engaged our guys and both were killed in the exchange of fire,” said
Gilan district police chief Mir Ahmad.
The Taliban were ousted from power weeks after the US-led invasion
launched less than a month after the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks
on the United States by the Al-Qaeda movement that was sheltered by the
Taliban regime.
The extremists have been able to regroup after their ouster and are
waging a virulent insurgency.
There are nearly 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan to hunt down
insurgents and to help rebuild the war-shattered nation.
Some of the contributing countries have admitted to encountering their
fiercest fighting in decades and have made urgent calls for extra troops
and equipment.
“It’s been very, very tough, it was always going to be tough,” Blair
said Saturday in an interview on the BBC.
“If the commanders on the ground want more equipment, armoured vehicles
for example, more helicopters, that will be provided,” he said. —Agencies |
