38 US, 76 Afghan casualties
this week; Iraq violence continues; 1 Million jobless veterans
This week has been another bloody one in Afghanistan as the 10-year-long
Operation Enduring Disaster continues. During the past week, there
have been 38 U.S. casualties and more than 76 Afghan ones in the
fighting.
A helicopter crash in in Wardak Province claimed the lives of
30 American Special Forces Navy Seals, 7 Afghan soldiers and an
interpreter on Saturday. Two more U.S. soldiers died on Sunday
in two separate incidents. One National Guard soldier was killed
while on patrol Thursday, along with a Marine in two separate
incidents. An Army specialist was killed on Friday in Kandahar
Province. Two 10th Mountain Division Soldiers were killed Wednesday
in Wardak Province when their unit hit an IED. Another soldier
was seriously wounded on Monday.
Two French soldiers were killed and five others were also wounded
on Sunday.
The crash of the Chinook helicopter happened during
a fire fight with local insurgents. It is unclear what caused
the crash. The Taliban claimed to have shot it down in a rocket
attack.
Separate bomb blasts in volatile southern Afghanistan
killed 10 police and wounded nine civilians. A bomb destroyed
at least 16 tankers on Saturday carrying fuel for NATO troops
in neighbouring Afghanistan. Four tankers were burned earlier
in the week outside of Kabul. A NATO airstrike on Friday in Helmand
Provice killed eight people, including women and children.
In Iraq, bombs planted around a house killed five
family members and wounded nine in the town of Iskandariya on
Sunday. Two bombs exploded near a petrol station wounding three
people, including one policeman, in central Mussayab on Friday.
On Thursday, Aa roadside bomb wounded 12 people including four
policemen, four soldiers and four civilians when it went off near
a joint army-police patrol in northern Baghdad. A Katusha rocket
also hit the green zone. War-related violence took the lives of
at least 23 more Iraqis during the week.
Iraq's prime minister on Sunday fired his electricity
minister, who is under investigation for allegations that he failed
to follow government guidelines in the signing of $1.7 billion
in deals with two foreign companies to build power stations.
More than one million Americanveterans are unemployed,
and the jobless rate among those who joined the services after
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, stands at 13.3 percent.
And more than one million service members are projected to leave
the military between 2011 and 2016 in a faltering economy. Yet,
the Department of War remains the U.S.' largest agency and politicians
insist that it is doing a "good job".
posted 07 August, 2011
Iranian shelling of Iraq;
UN to say longer; 2 US dead in Afghanistan
Iranian shelling of an Iraqi village in northern Kurdistan killed
a 13-year-old boy on Thursday. An Iraqi official said the boy
was killed as he was tending his sheep near the Kurdish village
of Tabas. Iranian forces have been shelling the area in an attempt
to target Kurdish rebels who operate on both sides of the volatile
border. Several villages and scores of Iraqis have fled to makeshift
refugee camps further inland.
Also on Thursday, two suicide bombers killed at least 15 people
and wounded more than 30 in Tikrit as police and soldiers were
collecting their salaries at a local bank. One suicide bomber
detonated his explosives among officers who were gathered outside
the Rafidain bank in the center of Tikrit, 95 miles north of Baghdad,
and moments later another blew up a car when emergency workers
arrived. Another bomb went off in Mosul.
On Friday, a bomb attached to a car wounded three passengers
in the vehicle when it went off in Baghdad's southern Saidiya
district. Armed men killed one policeman and a government-backed
Sunni Sahwa militia member when they opened fire on a joint police-Sahwa
foot patrol in Baqouba. A policeman was killed and ten others
wounded in separate attacks in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala
on Saturday. In a separate incident, six people were wounded in
a roadside bomb explosion at a marketplace in the town of Qara-Tapa,
some 80 miles north of Baqouba.
In contravention of the sovereignty and autonomy of Iraq, the
U.N. Security Council this week extended the mandate of the UNAMI
mission for another year...providing cover for the U.S. or other
occupation forces to remain in that country.
Suicide attackers killed at least 19 people, 12
of them young children, when they targeted government buildings
in southern Afghanistan Thursday. The assault in Uruzgan province
also wounded 35 civilians. The complex assault came the day after
the killing of the mayor of Kandahar.
On Friday, a minibus ran over a bomb in Nahri Sarraj
district of Helmand province, setting off a blast that killed
all 18 passengers. In the second blast, a farm tractor struck
a mine in Garmser district, killing one person and wounding four
others who were riding the vehicle. In eastern Afghanistan, a
bomb killed two U.S. soldiers.
Gunmen opened fire on a vehicle in Pakistan's southwestern
Baluchistan province on Saturday, killing 11 people. Pakistan
has placed new travel restrictions on American diplomats living
in the country, a U.S. official said Saturday, in the latest sign
of the breakdown in ties between Islamabad and Washington since
the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
posted 30 July, 2011
$34 B more wasted in
Iraq; 20 US casualties; Mortars from Afghanistan hit Pak families
The United States has wasted some $34 billion on service contracts
with the private sector in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according
to a study being finalized for Congress. The analysis by the Commission
on Wartime Contracting, details of which were first reported by
the Wall Street Journal, offers the most complete look so far
at the misuse of U.S. contracting funds in Afghanistan and Iraq,
where more than $200 billion has been doled out in the contracts
and grants over nearly a decade. More than 200,000 contractors
have been on the U.S. payroll at times in Iraq and Afghanistan
-- outstripping the number of U.S. troops currently on the ground
in those countries. The report blames a lack of oversight by federal
agencies for misuse of funds and warns of further waste when the
programs are transferred to Iraqi or Afghan control as the United
States withdraws its troops.
Even as the U.S. plans to withdraw "troops" from Iraq,
it plans to maintain a mercentary army. By January 2012, the State
Department will do something it’s never done before: command
a mercenary army the size of a heavy combat brigade. Stuart Bowen,
the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR)
says that this new mercenary army may lead to additional waste.
“Apparently, Ambassador Kennedy doesn’t want us doing
the oversight that we believe is necessary and properly within
our jurisdiction,” Bowen says. “That hard truth is holding
up work on important programs and contracts at a critical moment
in the Iraq transition.” So far, the State Department has
awarded three security contracts for Iraq worth nearly $2.9 billion
over five years for mercs.
There have been at least 20 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan
since Monday, including two Texans who died on Tuesday and Thursday.
Two soldiers were killed today in Kandahar, and
seven others were injured, following a roadside blast.
Three guardsmen died, and five more were wounded
on Monday when an IED detonated on their convory outside of Bagram.
One soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Kunar province on
Tuesday. Another died from a homemade-bomb on Thursday. Another
soldier died from a non-combat injury.
A NATO raid on an insurgents camp in a remote part
of southeastern Afghanistan resulted in 80 fighters being killed,
Afghan officials said Saturday. The attack began Thursday in Paktika
province and limited fighting continued into Saturday
The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan continues to spread into Pakistan.
Mortar shells fired from across the border in Afghanistan hit
a house in Pakistan on Thursday killing two people and wounding
several children. In the latest attack, four mortar shells hit
the house in Banda-Gai village in Mamoond area, 40 miles northwest
of Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal district.
An anti-Taliban militia killed 13 militants in clashes on Friday
and Saturday in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border.
A suicide bomber blew himself up at an army checkpoint in northwest
Pakistan on Sunday, killing one soldier and wounding two others.
posted 24 July, 2011
Petreaus flees failing
war; 10 more US dead; Iran hits PJAK in Iraq; Mumbai bomb attacks
General David Petraeus, handed over command of U.S. and NATO-led
troops in Afghanistan Monday, as Operation Enduring Disaster nears
the end of its 10th year. Petraeus, who handed over to U.S. Marine
Corps General John Allen, oversaw a "surge" of 30,000
extra U.S. forces last year. However, violence across Afghanistan
in 2010 hit its worst levels since the Taliban were ousted by
U.S.-led Afghan forces in 2001, with civilian and military casualties
hitting record levels, and this year has followed a similar trend.
On Monday, three more Americans were killed in a bomb blast bringing
to 10 the total of US dead for the week. Two Afghans, part of
33 who were kidnapped earlier in the week were found beheaded
in Afghanistan's west Monday. Seven Afghan policemen were killed
in an attack on a checkpoint in the southern city of Lashkar Gah.
A British soldier was shot dead on Sunday in the Nahr-e Saraj
district of Helmand province. NATO warplanes on Sunday bombed
a school in eastern Afghanistan. Local residents put the number
dead at 6 and wounded civilians at 11, saying that all those killed
and injured were tribesmen.
In the fifth killing of a senior official in less than a week,
the police chief of Afghanistan's Registan district was killed
Monday morning by a roadside bomb. On Sunday, a key political
adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a Parliament member
were gunned down in a home west of Kabul. Last week, Kandahar's
provincial council chief Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's half-
brother, was gunned down by a longtime bodyguard inside
his home. During a remembrance ceremony for Wali Karzai at a Kandahar
mosque two days later, a suicide bomber slipped into the building
and killed six people and wounded 15 others.
Violence continues in occupied Iraq as well. On Sunday, a roadside
bomb exploded, killing one member of the government-backed Sunni
Sahwa militia and wounding another, on the southwestern outskirts
of Kirkuk. Three gunmen were killed and two policemen were wounded
during a raid in western Mosul. A roadside bomb blew up, wounding
three policemen lin Mahaweel. A woman was stabbed to death in
front of her house late on Sunday in the town of Jurf al-Sakhar.
Seven Iraqis were killed on Saturday in various parts of the country.
A bomb in a minibus parked outside a restaurant
in the Karradah neighborhood of Baghdad killed two people and
wounded nine others on Friday. A sticky bomb attached to a policeman's
car went off near a checkpoint killing at least three people and
wounding 15 others, mainly policemen, in eastern Kerbala. Another
bomb attached to a minibus wounded two people in the southern
outskirts of Baghdad.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces siezed control
of three bases of an Iranian Kurdish opposition group in neighboring
Iraq on Monday. IRNA quoted Colonel Delavar Ranjbarzadeh, a local
commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guard, as saying "a
large number" of members of the Iranian Kurdish opposition
group PJAK have been killed in fierce clashes over the past two
days. The clashes are still ongoing.
Four U.S. missile strikes in northwestern Pakistan
July 12 killed at least 42 people. This included three strikes
in North Waziristan and an attack in the Dremala village of South
Waziristan.
India was hit by a series of bombs this week as
the U.S.-led war in the region continues to overspill into Pakistan
and India. Wednesday’s triple-bomb attack on Mumbai that
left 19 dead and 129 injured has Pakistan bracing for renewed
tensions with India.
posted 18 July, 2011
$800 Million Pak military
aid pulled; US airstrike kills more women, children; 4 US dead;
US House to waste $649 Billion more
The United States is suspending about one-third of its aid -
$800 Million - to the Pakistan military to increase pressure on
Islamabad on the fight against militants and the terrorist network.
Relations with Pakistan have become increasingly tense after the
secret US raid into Pakistan in May that killed al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden. Pakistan has expelled 100 US military trainers
and public sentiment against the US has grown.
An Afghan spy agency bodyguard shot dead an American soldier
and development worker in a gunfight triggered by a roadside argument
Saturday, in the northern province of Panjsher, before being killed
by return fire. NATO's International Security Assistance Force
said one of the ISAF employees killed was a soldier and the other
a civilian. This came on the same day that newly appointed Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Afghanistan for a visit with
U.S. and Afghan officials.
NATO forces said Thursday that they had unwittingly killed several
women and children a day earlier during an early morning air attack
against militants in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan. The
American-led coalition also said it was investigating separate
reports of civilian deaths in a nearby province. The fatal airstrike
on Wednesday in Khost Province, which Afghan officials say killed
eight children and two women.
On Sunday, three NATO soldiers and three policemen were killed
in bomb and insurgent attacks in the restive south and east of
Afghanistan.
Four U.S. soldiers have been killed this week as
Operation Enduring Disaster continues in Afghanistan and IRaq.
One died of wounded suffered when insurgents attached his unit
with a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) in Khowst. Another died
Friday in south Afghanistan. Two US soldiers died in Baghdad on
Thursday when their patrol was attacked by an IED.
Seven deminers kidnapped in western Afghanistan
have been beheaded by their abductors, police said Sunday. The
seven were part of a group of 28 deminers who were snatched on
Wednesday in a district that is the focus of the Taliban insurgency
in Farah province.
A NATO helicopter crashed Thursday in eastern Afghanistan
but no one was hurt.
In Iraq, amass grave with some 900 bodies, believed
to be Kurds killed during Saddam Hussein's rule in the 1980s,
was found buried in trenches at the local cemetery of al-Amharri
in al-Shanafiyah. Militants attacked a minor oil pipeline, halting
the flow into a gathering facility in Mosul on Sunday.
The House on Friday overwhelmingly passed a $649
billion defense spending bill that boosts the Pentagon budget
for FY 2012 by $17 billion and covers the costs of wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. The vote was 336-87 and reflected lawmakers'
intent to ensure continue to waste trillions of dollars on military
and war. The overall bill must be reconciled with a still-to-be-completed
Senate version.
posted 10 July, 2011
3 US troops dead in Iraq,
5 in Afghanistan; Kabul Intercontinental attacked
The U.S.-led war in Iraq continues unabated as June was the deadliest
month for American soldiers in that country in two years. Fifteen
U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in June, including three who were killed
in a rocket attack on their base in southern Iraq. Elsewhere in
Iraq, gunmen killed five Iraqi policemen in a Sunday attack in
Rutba and another policeman in southwestern Bagdad. A roadside
bomb blast killed one civilian and wounded another near the northern
city of Kirkuk. A family was kidnapped in Ramadi on Saturday.
In Afghanistan, One U.S. soldier was killed Thursday and another
one on Friday. A Marine from New Braunfels, Texas was killed in
a firefight on Tuesday. The young man was only 10 years old when
the U.S. invaded in 2001. A Marine was wounded early Sunday and
an Afghan national army soldier was killed in a shooting incident
at a base guard post while the two were standing watch together
at Camp Jackson in Sangin. The military also reported an additional
dead soldier from last Sunday. More than 200 U.S. troops have
died in Afghanistan already this year. An Italian soldier was
killed on Saturday.
A bomb blast apparently targeting a police post near the parliament
building in Kabul on Sunday injured three officers.
The blast follows a major Taliban attack at a landmark
hotel in Kabul on Thursday in which 24 people were killed and
more than a dozen wounded at one of the most secure places in
Afghanistan. Thirteen people were killed when five suicide bombers
and three gunmen stormed the hotel in an attack that lasted five
hours and led to the destruction of much of the fanciest hotel
in Afghanistan. The Taliban insurgents came prepared with suicide
vests and rocket propelled grenades. In the end it took a coalition
helicopter to blast the last holdouts off the roof . All the attackers
died at the scene.
About 500 demonstrators chanted "Death to the
Pakistan military!" and "Long live Afghanistan!"
as they protested in Kabul on Saturday against rocket attacks
that have killed at least 36 civilians, including 12 children,
along the eastern border with Pakistan in recent weeks.
At least thirteen civilians, including women and
children, were killed after their vehicle was struck by an IED
in the Shamulzai district of Zabul province late on Saturday.
In neighboring Kandahar province, two people riding a donkey were
killed Friday night when the animal stepped on a bomb in Maruf
district. When villagers came to recover the bodies, another roadside
bomb went off and killed two more.
Militants attacked the checkpoint in the Karora
area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan around midnight
Saturday, killing three policemen and wounding one more. Unidentified
gunmen abducted a Swiss couple in southwest Pakistan, the Swiss
Foreign ministry said Saturday. Six NATO oil tankers were destroyed
in a Sunday attack in Herat.
posted 03 July, 2011
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