Attacks in Afghanistan leave at least 20 people dead

KABUL, Afghanistan — Bombings killed at least 20 people in Afghanistan on Thursday as insurgents targeted Afghan security forces but left a number of civilians dead.

The deadliest incident was in southern Helmand province when a van struck a roadside bomb, killing 10 people, including five women and a child, said Helmand government spokesman Abdul Zeki.

Two teenage boys died when a bomb exploded in Zabul province as police tried to defuse it, said police spokesman Assadullah Shirza. Three police officers were wounded in the blast, he added. The boys had been scavenging for items in a trash pile when the explosion occurred, Shirza added.

The bombing elicited a strong condemnation from the NATO-led military coalition in Afghanistan. “These attacks are the most recent examples of how insurgents intentionally target, kill and injure those who want a brighter future for Afghanistan,” said Gen. John R. Allen, the force’s commander.

Rebels apparently target Alawite stronghold in Damascus again

BEIRUT -- Mortar shells apparently fired by anti-government rebels fell Wednesday in a Damascus district that is home to many members of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, the second deadly attack in the area this week, raising the prospect of inflamed sectarian hostilities in the tense Syrian capital.

The mortar rounds struck as rebels appear to have stepped up a campaign of violence in the capital. Car bombs and other attacks have become almost daily occurrences, despite heavy security and many government checkpoints.

The official Syrian state news service said Wednesday’s mortar salvos targeted the Mazzeh Jabal 86 neighborhood, killing three people and leaving six others hospitalized, including three in critical condition.

State media blamed the attack on “terrorists,” its standard term for mostly Sunni Muslim rebels seeking to overthrow Assad’s government.

Mazzeh Jabal 86 is home to many officers in the Syrian military and security services, which are dominated by members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, considered an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam. Syria’s Alawite minority is largely supportive of Assad in the face of the Sunni-led uprising against his family's more than 40 years of autocratic rule.

Reuters news service quoted a rebel Islamist group saying Wednesday’s mortar volleys targeted but missed the presidential palace, which sits on a  hill overlooking the capital.

The mortar attack came two days after a car bomb exploded in a crowded square in the Mazzeh Jabal 86 district, killing 11 people and injuring dozens, state media said

Along with bombings, targeted killings of government figures and supporters also appear to be on the upswing in the capital.

On Wednesday, the state news agency reported that “an armed terrorist group” assassinated a judge, Abad Nadweh, using a bomb that was attached to his car and detonated remotely.

The judge’s killing came a day after the brother of the speaker of the pro-Assad parliament was shot to death in his car in Damascus as he headed to work, according to official accounts.

Last weekend, rebels in Damascus abducted and executed a well-known Palestinian Syrian television actor, Mohamed Rafeh. Rebels accused Rafeh of being a government informant and enforcer. Friends and family say the actor was killed in retribution for his outspoken support of Assad.

Earlier this week, heavy fighting was reported in Damascus between pro and anti-Assad Palestinian factions.

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Photo: A handout picture released by Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reportedly shows damage caused by a mortar attack Wednesday in a residential district of Damascus. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency / SANA.

Pakistanis expect ties with U.S. to remain tense after Obama win

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Like the rest of the world, Pakistan watched keenly the electrifying finish to the U.S. presidential election that culminated in President Obama’s victory. But for most Pakistanis, the enthusiasm stops there.

Any change in Pakistan’s caustic relationship with the U.S. in the next four years is likely to be viewed through the prism of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal region -- two war-ravaged places where Washington and Islamabad desperately want lasting stability but disagree sharply about how to achieve it.

Both Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney touted similar Afghanistan-Pakistan game plans that involve commitments to a U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and a continued reliance on drone missile strikes to cripple Al Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups ensconced in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Pakistanis remain deeply skeptical of Washington’s withdrawal strategy in Afghanistan. They worry the U.S. will maintain a strong presence in Afghanistan long after 2014, principally as a perch from which to ensure extremist groups do not gain access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal. And a continuation, at least for now, of the drone campaign — seen by most Pakistanis as a blatant encroachment of their country’s sovereignty — will perpetuate the intense animosity many Pakistanis have for Washington’s policies.

“The perception here is that U.S. policy is not going to undergo a major change, in terms of the Af-Pak region,” said Raza Rumi, an analyst with the Jinnah Institute, an Islamabad think tank. “U.S. troops will withdraw in 2014. ... But the security establishment—the military, intelligence agencies, defense analysts—feels the U.S. won’t disappear from the region. It will be watching Pakistan closely. More importantly, it will keep Pakistan’s nuclear assets under scrutiny.

“So the Pakistani state is slightly edgy as to what the U.S. wants once Afghanistan is over,” Rumi added. “How will the U.S. observe Pakistan, and what steps will it take?”

Wave of bombings, killings goes on in Syria

BEIRUT -- A series of blasts claimed more civilian lives Tuesday  in the vicinity of the Syrian capital as scores were reported killed across the country in bombings, shelling, air raids and clashes between government forces and rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

On the streets of Damascus, meanwhile, assassins shot and killed the brother of Jihad Laham, the speaker of the Syrian parliament. Mohammed Osama Laham was shot by “terrorists” -- the government term for armed rebels -- as he drove in his car to work, according to the official Syrian news agency.

Opposition leaders say the Syrian parliament has long been a rubber stamp for Assad, whose family has ruled the country for more than 40 years. The parliament was revamped earlier this year as part of Assad’s proclaimed “reform” agenda, denounced as a sham by the opposition.

Both sides in the almost 20-month-old conflict have been accused of engaging in targeted assassinations.

The capital and its environs have endured a wave  of deadly bomb attacks in recent weeks. It is not clear if the bombings are part of a coordinated rebel strategy or targeted attacks by various groups.

On Tuesday, the official state media reported, 11 people were killed and scores injured as three bombs  exploded in the Wuroud district in the western Damascus suburb of Qudsaya. The government news agency said “terrorists” detonated a car bomb and two other explosive devices.

Photos displayed on state media showed children and other bloodied civilians, identified as bombing survivors,  at what appeared to be a hospital.  In one image, a woman with blood splattered on her face and clothes and apparently awaiting treatment cradles in her arms a sleeping girl whose yellow sweater is also stained with blood.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based pro-opposition group, estimated that at least 119 people were killed Tuesday across the country. At least 40 died in government bombardment of northwest Idlib province, which is mostly controlled by rebels.

The government has been using jet fighters firing rockets and bombs to attack opposition strongholds throughout the country, including the suburbs of Damascus.

Opposition activists have been reporting about 150 people killed daily inside Syria. The uprising that began in March 2011 has cost more than 30,000 lives, according to opposition groups. The government does not publish cumulative casualty figures.

In New York, Jeffrey Feltman, the United Nations' under-secretary-general for political affairs, warned Tuesday that the situation inside Syria “is turning grimmer every day.”

“The risk is growing that this crisis could explode outward into an already volatile region,” he said.

Some violence from Syria has already spilled into neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan; Israel has accused Syria of moving tanks into a demilitarized zone in the contested Golan Heights, captured by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War.

The United Nations has been unable to negotiate a truce to the Syrian fighting.  A special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat, is trying to craft a proposal to help end the bloodshed, though a weekend truce he helped broker last month fell apart quickly amid violations by both sides.

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Photo: A picture supplied by the  Syrian Arab News Agency shows damage it says was caused by car bombs in the western Damascus region on Tuesday. Credit:  European Pressphoto Agency / SANA

 

Car bombs, aerial attacks pummel Syria

BEIRUT — A car bomb exploded Monday in a district of Damascus that is home to many security personnel and members of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, killing 11 people and wounding dozens of others, the official state news media reported.

The attack was part of a wave of violence reported Monday across Syria, including a massive car bombing apparently targeting a military post in the central province of Hama and aerial bombardment of rebel-held towns in northwestern Syria. Scores were reported killed.

Monday’s car bombing in Damascus’ Mazzeh Jabal 86 district, which has a large concentration of Alawites, is the latest in a series of explosions in the Syrian capital that could inflame sectarian tensions. Mostly Sunni Muslim rebels have been fighting to oust Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam.

Other Damascus-area bombings in recent weeks have hit near a revered Shiite shrine, Sayyida Zainab, and in the Bab Touma district, a historic Christian neighborhood in Damascus’ Old City.

Report: Israel leaders ordered preparedness for Iran strike in 2010

JERUSALEM — Israel's prime minister and defense minister tried to move their country closer to an attack on Iran in 2010 but military and security chiefs resisted, an Israeli television program reported Monday.

The Channel 2 television magazine “Fact” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the military to enter a level of preparedness termed P Plus, reportedly code for preparing for a military strike.

It remained unclear whether they intended to follow through with a strike or just wanted to signal that Israel was prepared to make such a move. Ultimately the instructions to the military were dropped.

In a taped interview that followed the segment, Netanyahu told “Fact” that he was “not eager to go to war” and would be “very happy” to see international sanctions force Iran to rein in its nuclear program, which Tehran says is peaceful in intent but Israel, the U.S. and others fear will produce a nuclear weapon.

“At the end of the day, as prime minister of the Jewish state, the responsibility is mine to prevent the threat to our existence,” Netanyahu said.

In the feature, which aired Monday night, veteran investigative journalist Ilana Dayan reported that the order was given somewhat casually, at the end of a ministerial forum convened on a different matter.

But Gabi Ashkenazi and Meir Dagan, then army chief of staff and head of Mossad, respectively, resisted the instruction, said Dayan's report. Ashkenazi reportedly said the army wasn't ready; Dagan contended that only the security Cabinet could authorize such a step because it might lead to war. Both men have since left their posts.

The report highlights the continuing disagreement between Netanyahu and some of his top security officials on the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear program, a topic that in recent years has become a permanent fixture on the agenda in Israel.

U.S., allies marshaling African proxies for fight against terrorism

"A quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing."

That was how British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain saw the Nazi threat against the Czech Sudetenland in 1938, a sentiment freshly evoked among war-weary citizens as the United States and its allies ponder moves to oust Islamic extremists from northern Mali, a country most Americans couldn't find on a map.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and diplomatic counterparts from France have been shopping around a plan to train and equip West African troops to drive out the Al Qaeda-aligned militants who hold sway over a swath of northern Mali the size of Texas. Ultraorthodox Muslims this year hijacked a long-simmering rebellion by ethnic Tuaregs and began imposing an extreme version of Islamic law once in power. In July, they took axes to "idolatrous" cultural treasures in Timbuktu, provoking worldwide horror at the destruction.

Like Afghanistan before 9/11, when Taliban collusion with Al Qaeda made the country a training ground for terrorism, Mali left in the grip of militant Islamists runs the risk of becoming the next launch pad for attacks on the United States and its allies.

U.S. interest in rooting out Ansar Dine and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb from northern Mali has intensified in the seven weeks since a suspected terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The Al Qaeda affiliates in Mali are believed to have played at least a supportive role in the Benghazi attack.

"The Benghazi event, with the murder of Chris Stevens, has really precipitated American intervention. It's turned the tables in the region," said Ghislaine Lydon, a history professor at UCLA and expert on precolonial Northwest Africa.

Two international soldiers killed by Afghan in uniform

This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two international soldiers were slain in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday by a gunman in an Afghan police uniform, the NATO-led military coalition said.

The attack had the hallmarks of a series of insider attacks, in which Afghan security forces have turned their guns on their international partners. At least 53 troops have been slain in such attacks this year, according to the NATO-led alliance.

Tuesday's attack was still under investigation and the slain soldiers’ nationalities were not immediately disclosed.  But Afghan officials and the Taliban said the attack occurred in Helmand province, a front line in the war between the Afghan government and the Taliban-led Pashtun insurgency.

[Updated at 12:40 p.m. Oct. 30: The two slain soldiers were later identified by the British Defense Ministry as members of the Royal Gurkha Rifles regiment. A spokesman declined to disclose whether the soldiers were British or Nepalese nationals. The regiment is staffed by Nepalese and commanded by British officers.]

The Taliban described the fighter in a statement as “an infiltrating soldier” who opened fire on British troops in Helmand province. The militants put the number of dead at three.

14 kidnapped Central American migrants found in Mexico

 

MEXICO CITY -- As a group of mothers from Honduras, Guatemala and other countries travels across Mexico in search of missing relatives, the Mexican navy on Monday announced that it had freed 14 Central Americans kidnapped by suspected drug traffickers.

Thousands of migrants from Central America go missing every year as they attempt to reach the United States through Mexico. They are often kidnapped by Mexican gangsters, held for ransom, forced to work for cartels or on marijuana farms, or killed. Many turn up in hidden mass graves.

Naval marines acting on what they described as an anonymous tip over the weekend discovered 14 migrants being held against their will in a shack in the town of Altamira, in the violent border state of Tamaulipas (link in Spanish). The state has been the scene of several massacres of Central American and Mexican migrants.

The rescued men and women looked for the most part young and skinny, judging by a video released by the navy. They told authorities they had been kidnapped in different places in Tamaulipas and were from Central America, the navy said. The navy did not offer a breakdown of nationalities and said their "migratory status" would be corroborated. They stand a good chance of being deported.

Two men who apparently were holding the migrants were arrested, the navy said.

Monday's announcement from the navy gives hope to groups searching for the missing that more  victims may still be alive.

A caravan of mothers  this month embarked on a 19-day, 14-state journey through Mexico. All 40 or so mothers are looking for children, spouses or other relatives who vanished on their way north. Through the efforts of the organizers -- they've staged a caravan every of the last several years -- and other migrant-rights activists, a few missing relatives have been found and reunited with mothers.

Human rights groups say government neglect and refusal to recognize the problem of the missing result in  families left with the task of searching on their own, sometimes going state to state to offer DNA evidence when bodies turn up.

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Photo: Central American migrants ride on top of a train in Veracruz state, one of the precarious ways in which they try to reach the U.S., in June 2011. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency

 

 

 

 

 

 

Micro-bus in Damascus reportedly hit by shell; at least 10 dead

BEIRUT -- On what was supposed to be the last day of a holiday cease-fire in Syria, a government shell struck a micro-bus in Damascus on Monday, killing at least 10 people, many of them children, activists said.

Photos and videos reportedly take at the scene in the Al-Hajar al-Aswad neighborhood showed children’s bloody bodies lined up on the ground and the injured being taken away by taxis or other buses. Government forces later raided the Palestine Hospital in the neighborhood and arrested some of the wounded, activists said.

The incident came on the final day of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday that was marked by clashes and airstrikes rather than the hoped-for lull in violence. Reports of the attack could not be independently confirmed because the Syrian government restricts media access to the conflict zone.

Other opposition-held neighborhoods and suburbs also were constantly shelled on Monday, activists reported.

In the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, considered to be an area loyal to the government, state media reported that a car bomb killed at least six people and injured more than 50.