DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: Female Car Bomber Kills 12 In Kabul

DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: Female Car Bomber Kills 12 In Kabul
*Revenge for an anti-Islam film made in America

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources by Sardar Ahmad  Agence-France Presse
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - September 18, 2012: A female suicide car bomber attacked a van in Kabul Tuesday, killing 12 people, including eight South Africans, in an assault insurgents said was in revenge for an anti-Islam film made in America.

The bombing on a highway leading to Kabul international airport was the second suicide attack in the heavily fortified city in 10 days, reviving questions about stability as NATO accelerates a troop withdrawal and hands over to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

It came as officers revealed that Western troops are scaling back joint operations with Afghans after 51 NATO soldiers were shot dead this year by their local colleagues, a setback for the war strategy that focuses on training Afghans to take over.

An AFP photographer saw at least six bodies lying among the wreckage of a gutted minivan, and another vehicle destroyed by flames still burning in the middle of the highway, with debris flung all around.

"At around 6:45 am (0215 GMT) a suicide bomber using a sedan blew himself up along the airport road in District 15. As a result, nine workers of a foreign company and three Afghan civilians are dead, and two police are wounded," police said in a statement.

An Afghan and a Western security official said nine foreigners were killed. The South African foreign ministry said eight of its citizens were among the dead.

"The foreigners were from a private company working at the airport," the Afghan official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it had no reports that its personnel were among the casualties.

Afghanistan's second largest insurgent group, Hezb-i-Islami, claimed responsibility, saying it was carried out by a woman to avenge the "Innocence of Muslims" film, which has sparked a weekof furious anti-US riots across Asia, North Africa and the Middle East.

"The bombing was carried out by a woman named Fatima. The bombing was in retaliation for the insult to our Prophet," spokesman Zubair Sidiqi in a telephone call to AFP from an undisclosed location.

It is extremely rare for the faction to claim a suicide attack in Afghanistan. It is also rare for women, few of whom drive in Afghanistan, to carry out suicide attacks.

A police investigator said he believed the bomber was female, after finding parts of a woman's leg.

On Monday, protests turned violent for the first time in Afghanistan over the low-budget trailer for the film, which is believed to have been produced by extremist Christians, as hundreds hurled stones at a US military base and clashed with police.

In the northern city of Kunduz, several hundred university students threw stones at police and set fire to photographs of US President Barack Obama in a fresh protest on Tuesday.

Under new orders, most joint patrols and advisory work with Afghan troops -- the cornerstone of NATO departure plans -- will have to be approved by a regional commander.

Cooperation with smaller units will have to be "evaluated on a case-by-case basis and approved by RC (regional) commanders", ISAF said in a statement.

NATO, which is helping the Afghan government fight a Taliban-led insurgency now in its 11th year, is gradually withdrawing its 112,600 remaining troops.

But as so-called insider attacks have grown, US commanders have gradually acknowledged the assaults pose a serious threat to the war effort and have struggled to stem the problem.

The commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, General John Allen, "has directed all operational commanders to review force protection and tactical activities in the light of the current circumstances", a US military officer in Washington said in an email.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking at a news conference in Beijing, said the attacks were worrisome but that he believed Allen had taken the right approach to counter the problem.

But he insisted the insider assaults would not delay or derail plans to complete a drawdown of troops by the end of 2014 as planned.

The decision came after six ISAF soldiers were shot dead by suspected Afghan police and after the Taliban destroyed six US fighter jets in an unprecedented assault on a major base in the south this weekend.

It was unclear how the new rules for joint patrols might affect the plan to pull out the bulk of NATO combat forces, as some Afghan units are considered ill-prepared to begin operating independently.

Afghanistan police and officials investigate the site of a suicide attack in Kabul on September 18, 2012. A suicide bomber blew himself up alongside a minivan carrying foreigners on a major highway leading to the international airport in the Afghan capital, police said, killing at least 12 people, including nine foreigners.

Map locating Kabul where at least 12 people were killed in a suicide attack on Tuesday

Supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah group hold signs during a rally in Beirut to denounce a film mocking Islam on September 17, 2012. An eruption of Muslim anger over a trailer of the American-made film that appeared on the Internet has spread across the world, taking hold in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, the West Bank, the Philippines and Yemen.

A Pakistani activist from Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, a student wing of the hard line Sunni party Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), throws a tear gas shell towards the police near the US consulate during a protest against an anti-Islam movie in Karachi.

Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah addresses thousands of supporters who took to the streets of southern Beirut to denounce a film mocking Islam on September 17, 2012. Nasrallah, who made a rare public appearance, has called for a week of protests across the country over the low-budget, US-made film, describing it as the "worst attack ever on Islam."

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources by Sardar Ahmad  Agence-France Presse 
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*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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India: Dozens Of Militants Cross Into Indian Kashmir - Captured Militant

India: Dozens Of Militants Cross Into Indian Kashmir - Captured Militant

(NSI News Source Info) SRINAGAR, India - April 26, 2009: More than 30 Islamic militants have crossed into Indian Kashmir from the Pakistan side of the divided region in recent weeks, a captured militant said Saturday. Syed Moinullah Shah, a suspected Pakistani rebel allegedly belonging to Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen, the largest Kashmiri guerrilla group fighting against Indian rule, and Brigadier Gurmeet Singh, right, look on during a press conference organized by the Indian army, at an army base in Srinagar, India, Saturday, April 25, 2009. Indian army arrested Shah in Indian-controlled Kashmir and recovered arms and ammunition from him, a top army officer said on Saturday. The infiltration by such a large number of militants is likely to fuel security concerns in Kashmir which is in the middle of a five-stage general election that has been boycotted by Muslim separatists. The first two rounds of voting passed off peacefully but next week polling moves to the region's more sensitive Muslim-majority areas. "In all 120 of us infiltrated into this side of Kashmir," the militant, Sakib Moinullah Shah, told a press briefing arranged by the military in Srinagar. "Thirty-one were militants. Others were porters, guides and those who cut the snow to make way for us," said Shah, a Pakistani national. Shah was captured after a series of gunbattles with the security forces that left 12 of the militants dead. According to the Indian army's senior officer in Kashmir, Brigadier General Gurmit Singh, another six died in an avalanche, leaving a dozen still at large. The porters, guides and snow beaters had all crossed back over the Line of Control that divides Indian- and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. "These guides and porters are paid only after they return," Singh said. Shah said he was a member of Indian Kashmir's most powerful militant group the Hizbul Mujahedin. Kashmir is in the grip of a nearly 20-year old insurgency against Indian rule that has so far left more than 47,000 people dead, according to official figures.

French In Show Of Force In Deadly Afghan Valley

French In Show Of Force In Deadly Afghan Valley

(NSI News Source Info) Sarobi, Afghanistan - March 15, 2009: It is still night when the convoy moves off, winding through hills like a huge snake: around 100 French armored vehicles descend into a valley east of Kabul, their lights lacing through the darkness. More than 500 French soldiers and 300 Afghan police and soldiers, as well a handful of men from the Norwegian Special Forces on all-terrain quad bikes are on the ground for ‘Operation Three Valleys’ in the district of Sarobi. French soldiers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Above, reconnaissance drones and helicopters watch over the only route, a difficult and dusty road that is vulnerable to ambushes. It was just a few kilometres (miles) from here that the French military last August suffered its heaviest loss in 25 years when 10 soldiers were killed in an insurgent attack. ‘We want to show the people and the insurgents that the French army is not here for revenge but that we will go where we want to and when we want to,’ says Colonel Franck Chatelus, who commands the French battalion in Kabul. The Afghan forces lead this push into a sometimes hostile area.‘This is also the time to show that the Afghan army today is not the same one of a few years ago, when it looted the country and maltreated the population,’ Chatelus adds.The area, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the capital, is austere, stoney and mountainous; in the valley, small villages of mud-brick houses suddenly appear alongside a few fields. French soldiers take position on the ridges while Afghan troops cover the police as they enter a village called Washa Kalay with a hostile reputation. A quick search of some houses reveals nothing of interest but there is a field of opium poppies a lucrative crop that officials say finances some of the insurgents. Police unenthusiastically uproot some of the shoots with a wooden spade, stamping on others.‘The insurgents who were in the village have gone to the other side of the mountain in Laghman province,’ says Mohibullah Babakar Khel, from the Afghan intelligence service. Later the French colonel addresses elders in the village ‘We offer our hand to the insurgents who agree to give up and cooperate with us.’ ‘Give us your mines and bombs so that we can destroy them otherwise they risk killing or wounding your children.’ The impoverished residents demand a well, electricity, a school. ‘If a school is built, this area has to be secure. And a school would have to be for boys and for girls,’ says a French officer, referring to a tendency to prevent girls getting an education.The French put on an impressive security cover for a visit the next day to the village of Siri Kalay but wait an hour for the police to arrive enough time for any insurgents to hide arms or ammunition.This time only Afghan police enter the village, making for an unoccupied house that is said to belong to a ‘Commander Rostam,’ a member of the radical Hezb-e-Islami faction who has fled to Pakistan. The raid nets police and military uniforms as well some electrical components, perhaps used for detonators. ‘Here the people are all against us,’ says 20-year-old policeman Nasratullah, who earns just 120 dollars a month. ‘Policemen have been killed close by. Without the planes of the international forces, they would have ambushed us.’ The rebels may have been silent but the area is still dangerous on the first day of the operation, mine clearers destroyed three rockets already in their launchers.But the foreign troops part of a steadily expanding NATO-led International Security Assistance Force that now numbers about 62,000 across Afghanistan believe they have made an impression. ‘The outcome of the operation is not material but psychological and moral. Little by little we are gaining the confidence of the population,’ says Chatelus, the French colonel. ‘The insurgents were unable to do anything, they have been discredited in the eyes of the people,’ he says