Suicide bomber detonates truck outside Afghan and NATO base

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber detonated a truck at the entrance of a shared Afghan and NATO base in eastern Afghanistan, wounding several local and international troops, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Wednesday attack. At least 10 Afghan forces were wounded, said a police spokesman in the Zurmat district of eastern Paktia province.  

A NATO force spokesperson, U.S. Army Major Martyn Crighton, confirmed that the wounded included international troops but declined to provide further details. He said the explosion was followed by incoming rocket or mortar fire.  

A statement by the Taliban said the attack occured at 7 a.m. and destroyed two helicopters and surveillance equipment and caused dozens of casualties.

The attack follows a suicide bombing Saturday at an intelligence office in Kandahar province that killed a CIA agent and a senior Afghan intelligence official.  The beginning of October saw a suicide bomb attack on an Afghan base in Khost, killing 20 people including three U.S. soldiers; and in  September,  fighters stormed the main NATO base in Helmand province, killing two U.S. Marines and destroying six Harrier jets.

The Taliban and its allies have started targeting the Afghan soldiers and police that the United States is counting on to secure the country as international forces withdraw by the end of 2014.

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Photo: Afghan policemen stand guard at a checkpoint in Ghazni following a suicide bomb attack targeting a military base in Zurmat district in neighboring Paktia province, on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012. Credit: Naweed Haqjoo / European Pressphoto Agency

 

CIA officer killed in Afghanistan suicide bombing, sources say

WASHINGTON -- A CIA officer was among those killed by a suicide bomber in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, sources familiar with the incident said, in the latest of a series of fatal insider attacks that have undermined American efforts to turn security over to Afghan forces.

A NATO spokesman said the bomber was a member of Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, or NDS. An NDS spokesman disputed that, telling the Associated Press that the attacker had worn an Afghan uniform to gain access to the building in Kandahar.

A U.S. official said the bomber had served on the Afghan police force for six years before moving to the NDS. He said officials believe the attack was a Taliban operation targeting NDS officers. The bomber was noticed acting suspiciously but detonated the device before anyone could shoot him.

The bomber blew himself up as Americans and Afghan officials were arriving to deliver new office furniture to the intelligence headquarters in Kandahar's Maruf district, the AP reported. Two Americans and four Afghan intelligence agents were killed in the blast.

The Pentagon identified the U.S. military casualty as Spc. Brittany B. Gordon, 24, of St. Petersburg, Fla., assigned to the 572 Military Intelligence Company, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.

The second American killed was a CIA officer deployed in Afghanistan, sources familiar with the situation said. CIA staff was briefed on the bombing this week, said the sources, who would not be quoted discussing potentially classified information. The officer’s name and role was not disclosed. The CIA had no comment.

More than 50 U.S. and NATO troops have been killed this year by members of Afghan security forces, although Saturday’s incident apparently is the first reported insider attack by an Afghan intelligence officer. NDS officers are presumed to be well vetted.

In September 2011, an Afghan working for the U.S. government killed one CIA employee and wounded another American in an attack on a CIA office in Kabul, U.S. officials said at the time.

In 2009, an Al Qaeda double agent detonated a suicide vest as he got out of a car inside a CIA base in Khost province, killing seven CIA officers in the largest single-day loss for the spy agency since the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut in 1983.

By tradition, slain CIA officers are recognized with a star carved in a marble wall in the lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. The wall has more than 100 stars, but not every CIA death is reported or immediately acknowledged.

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Five British troops charged with murder in Afghan incident

LONDON — Five Royal Marines have been charged with murder in an allegedly unlawful death in Afghanistan last year, defense officials said Sunday, marking what is believed to be the first time that the British military has taken such a step since the conflict began more than a decade ago.

Authorities have disclosed few details of the incident in question, saying only that no civilian was involved and that the death occurred after “an engagement with an insurgent.”

The five marines are being held in Britain as prosecutors pursue a potential court-martial, officials said. Four other service members who were arrested have been released without charge pending further investigation.

British media outlets reported that the arrests stemmed from video found on the laptop of one of the suspects by civilian police in Britain. But the exact nature of the images remains unclear.

The marines reportedly belonged to the 3 Commando Brigade, which was deployed last year in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, an area of intense fighting. British media said that seven members of the brigade were killed in action in Afghanistan during a six-month stretch in 2010.

Defense Secretary Philip Hammond pledged that any abuse would “be dealt with through the normal processes” of military justice.

Iran wages its own war against drugs

HIRMAND, Iran -- The featured speaker -- an 11-year-old girl -- waited hours for the helicopter to land near the watch tower and high concrete walls in this remote region not far from the Afghanistan border. Close by, a military band  played marching music on large drums and trumpets, sounding  a discordant note in an arid desert where drug smugglers make their fortunes ferrying drugs into Iran.

The spectacle was orchestrated by the Iran government on Wednesday to showcase the success of its anti-narcotics forces in thwarting drug-smuggling into the country. 

Flanked by her mother and other relatives under a burning sun, young Zahra stood before reporters to  praise "the role of my martyred dad and his comrades in fighting narcotic traffickers."

Her father, a border agent killed three years ago, was one of more than 3,700 agents who have died in ambushes or in clashes with outlaws over the last three decades along Iran’s border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Just two nights before the event staged for the media, three more border agents were killed.

“Iran is fighting with the illicit drug traffickers on behalf of all humanity, ” said Gen. Ali Moaiyedi, chief commander of the anti-narcotic police.

Two international troops killed in Afghanistan attacks

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber struck an Afghan intelligence office in the country’s south Saturday, killing six people, including a member of the NATO force in the country, Afghan and international security officials said.

The attacker approached the intelligence office either on foot or on a motorcycle, according to contradictory accounts by local officials. A civilian employee of the U.S.-led international force was among the dead.

A military official from the international force confirmed that one of its service members and a civilian employee had been killed but declined to provide their identities.

A second service member died in a bombing in the south, the NATO force announced in a statement.
 
The attacks in Kandahar province are  meant to intimidate the Afghan forces who are set to take over security as the Americans prepare to leave the country in 2014.

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Police official in Mexico held in case of politician’s slain son

MEXICO CITY — An assistant police chief in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuña has been taken into custody by state authorities who suspect he was involved in the slaying of the son of a nationally known and controversial politician.

Prosecutors Monday alleged that the assistant chief, Rodolfo Castillo Montes, tricked the victim, Jose Eduardo Moreira Rodriguez, into going to a location where he was picked up by criminals who eventually killed him on Wednesday.

Moreira, 25, was the son of Humberto Moreira, the former governor of Coahuila state, where Acuña is located. Humberto Moreira later became president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, but stepped down after being embroiled in a financial scandal that began during his governorship.

The slaying of the son of one of the nation’s best-known politicians has been a major news story in Mexico in recent days.

In a statement Monday, state prosecutors said they were holding two other police officers in addition to the assistant chief on suspicion of premeditated homicide. The statement also said authorities were looking for three men who are believed to have actually carried out the killing.

The Zetas drug gang is particularly strong in Coahuila, and prosecutors are trying to determine the role of organized crime in the slaying. A recently captured alleged Zetas field commander, Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo, alias the Squirrel, is being questioned about the slaying, as well as a recent prison break in the state.

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Photo: Jose Eduardo Moreira Rodriguez, who was found shot to death last week. He was the son of a former Mexican state governor and political party leader. Credit: Alberto Puente / Associated Press

 

Civilians in greater peril, Red Cross chief in Afghanistan says

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The departing head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan warned Monday that the country's civilians live in more peril today than when he started his job seven years earlier.

"Since I arrived here in 2005, local armed groups have proliferated, civilians have been caught between not just one but multiple front lines, and it has become increasingly difficult for ordinary Afghans to obtain healthcare," Reto Stocker said in a statement released by the organization. "Hardship arising from the economic situation, or from severe weather or natural disaster, has become more widespread, and hope for the future has been steadily declining.”

Stocker painted an alarming  portrait of Afghanistan's future, in sharp contrast to the regularly more upbeat pronouncements of U.S. officials that the country is edging toward stability after the massive  troop surge early in the Obama administration.

Stocker noted the Red Cross had made progress in making sides aware of civilians’ rights after decades of strife in Afghanistan. He highlighted the receptivity by the Afghan government to addressing poor conditions in detention centers, but he worried this would prove fleeting with the departure of international forces, scheduled for late 2014.

2 U.S. military personnel killed in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two U.S. military personnel died in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, the U.S. military said in a statement.  

No further information was available about the deaths.  The total number of U.S. troops who have died in Afghanistan since American forces entered the country in 2001 is 2,134, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks military deaths.    

On Monday, three U.S. soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber in the eastern Afghanistan city of Khowst that left at least 20 people dead, Afghan authorities said, and a U.S. soldier died Tuesday in a  bomb blast  in southern Afghanistan. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization declined to reveal the nationalities of the military personnel killed in Monday's attack.

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Afghanistan bomb blast kills U.S. soldier

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A bomb blast in southern Afghanistan fatally wounded a American soldier Tuesday,  the U.S. military said in a statement.

Officials provided no further details beyond the statement, which read: "A U.S. Forces-Afghanistan service member died of wounds following an improvised explosive device attack in southern Afghanistan today."

The incident followed an attack Monday by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle against a joint patrol by Afghan and coalition forces in the eastern city of Khowst that left at least 20 people dead, including three soldiers whom Afghan authorities identified as American.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization declined to give the nationality of the dead military personnel.

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Afghan authorities raise death toll to 20 in motorcycle bombing

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan authorities raised the death toll in a suicide bombing Monday to at least 20 people, including three coalition soldiers they identified as Americans.

The attack occurred when a bomber aboard a motorcycle rammed into a convoy of NATO and Afghan forces carrying out a joint patrol in the eastern city of Khowst, local authorities said. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred about 8:30 a.m. in the middle of a bustling plaza.

Abdul Jabar Nahimi, governor for Khowst province, said the blast killed 10 Afghan civilians and six Afghan police officers, in addition to the three Americans and an Afghan interpreter. More than 60 other people were injured, including three Afghan police officers.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization had confirmed the deaths of the coalition soldiers and the Afghan interpreter in an earlier statement, but did not immediately release the nationalities of the soldiers killed.

Khowst is one of Afghanistan’s most dangerous provinces, perched on the border of Pakistan's volatile tribal areas that serve as sanctuary for some Afghan insurgents. In December 2009, the province was the scene of a suicide bombing of a CIA base that killed seven the intelligence agency's employees and contractors.

Joint patrols have become one of the most controversial aspects of the uneasy partnership between Washington and Kabul, as both sides prepare for the handoff of security responsibilities to Afghan forces by the end of 2014. So-called insider attacks -- members of Afghan security forces killing their coalition counterparts -- have claimed the lives of more than 50 U.S. and coalition troops this year.

In reaction to the jump in insider attacks, NATO earlier this month temporarily suspended joint operations with Afghan security forces, allowing them only if they were approved by a high-ranking regional commander. Though the restrictions remain in place, U.S. officials say cooperation on joint operations has resumed.

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Photo: Afghan police search people at a roadside checkpoint Monday following a suicide bomb attack targeting a convoy of NATO and Afghan soldiers in Khowst. Credit: Shah Noorani / EPA