Thursday, September 09, 2010 WASHINGTON: Afghan police went on alert yesterday to guard against demonstrations triggered by a US church’s plan to burn a copy of the Qur’an on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks which has drawn global condemnation. Tension has risen with the approach of the ninth anniversary on Saturday of the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks on the US. Plans by Terry Jones, the pastor of a small ... Read More

Kabul, Afghanistan: The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned Tuesday that an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book the Koran could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide. "Images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan -- and around the world -- to inflame public opinion and incite violence," Gen. David Petraeus said in ... Read More

Tuesday, 07 Sep, 2010 BRUSSELS: US General David Petraeus, the commander of the war in Afghanistan, has requested 2,000 extra troops to bolster a crucial mission to train Afghan security forces, a Nato official said on Monday. The mission would come on the heels of the deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers who were sent as part of a surge strategy aimed at crushing ... Read More

KABUL : One of the principal owners of the Afghan bank at the center of an accelerating financial crisis here said depositors had withdrawn $180 million in the past two days. He predicted a "revolution" in the country's financial system unless the Afghan government and the United States moved quickly to help stabilize the bank. Khalilullah Frozi, one of the two largest shareholders of Kabul Bank, said reports ... Read More

Friday, September 03, 2010 BERLIN: German General Egon Ramms, chief of operations of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, criticised Thursday Afghan President Hamid Karzai for failing to support NATO forces in the war against the Taliban. Ramms said in an interview with the daily economic newspaper Handelsblatt that the president "looks at things from a point of view that, in no way, we can like." Karzai, speaking in Kabul, had said the ... Read More

Afghan and NATO-led troops during a joint operation arrested several Taliban militants in their birthplace the southern Kandahar province, a press release of the alliance said Thursday, Xinhua reported. "An Afghan and coalition security forces detained several insurgents in Kandahar province Wednesday including two Taliban weapons facilitators operating around Kandahar City," the press release added. The security forces first targeted a compound in Daman district in pursuit of ... Read More

Tuesday, 31 Aug, 2010 KABUL: Four US soldiers were killed in a bomb attack in Afghanistan Tuesday, Nato said, bringing the toll of Americans to 21 dead since Friday. Nato spokesman James Judge confirmed to AFP that four American soldiers were killed in eastern Afghanistan by an improvised explosive devise (IED). The deaths bring to 484 the total number of foreign troops killed in the ... Read More

Mon Aug 30, KABUL – A bomb blast in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad Monday killed a district chief and injured up to five others, an official and the interior ministry said. "The explosion targeted the vehicle of La'al Poor district chief Sayed Mohammad Pahlawan at 9:15am (0445 GMT) this morning," said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for Nangahar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital. "He was ... Read More

August 28, 2010 Insurgents launched pre-dawn attacks Saturday on a major NATO base in eastern Afghanistan and a nearby camp where seven CIA employees were killed last year in a suicide bombing. NATO said there were no coalition casualties and the attacks were repelled. It said 13 insurgents were killed — four of whom were wearing suicide vests — and five captured. Afghanistan's Interior Ministry put the insurgent death toll in ... Read More

Friday, 27 Aug, 2010 KABUL: Three American soldiers were killed Friday in separate bomb attacks in Afghanistan, Nato said. The International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), Nato's counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan, said two of the soldiers died in a Taliban-type roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan. The third died in a similar bombing in the volatile south. An Isaf spokesman confirmed to AFP that all three were Americans. Their ... Read More

Friday, 27 Aug, 2010 Obama pressured Karzai earlier this year to do more to root out corruption, which Washington says complicates efforts to win over the population to the effort by foreign and Afghan forces to fight a widening insurgency. WASHINGTON: The CIA is making payments to a significant number of officials in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration, The Washington Post reported on Friday. ... Read More

Friday, 27 Aug, 2010 A senior Afghan official told the Post that President Hamid Karzai also had grown increasingly frustrated with US policy towards Pakistan. WASHINGTON: Afghanistan’s National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta has urged the United States to sanction Pakistan and refuse visas to Pakistani generals, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. In an interview to the Post, the Afghan official claimed that the ... Read More