Bomb Claims Five US Troops in South Afghanistan

Source : http://www.almanar.com.lb

A roadside bomb killed five US occupation troops in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, in the biggest attack on NATO- led forces since the Taliban movement launched their "spring offensive" a week ago.

"Five American soldiers were killed at about noon when their armored vehicle hit a powerful roadside mine in Maiwand district," Kandahar province's police chief General Abdul Razeq told Agence France Presse.

The troops died in an improvised explosive device (IED) attack, NATO's International Security Assistance Force confirmed in a statement without specifying the nationalities of the victims, in line with coalition policy.

The attack came four days after three British soldiers were killed in a similar attack in the neighboring province of Helmand.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Taliban militants frequently use roadside bombs against US-led foreign troops and their Afghan allies.

Afghan police and soldiers are taking over responsibility for security, but there is growing concern over the country’s prospects after 2014 when all foreign combat deployments will finish.

Afghanistan Plane Crash Kills 4 Isaf Personnel

Source : RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, April 27 (RIA Novosti) - Four members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) were killed on Saturday when a plane went down in southern Afghanistan, NATO said.

The Associated Press reported NATO as saying there was no enemy activity in the area at the time, but coalition personnel had secured the site and the cause of the crash was being investigated

The NATO statement did not identify the nationalities of the victims, or say where the plane went down.

However, Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar, deputy governor of the southern province of Zabul, said an aircraft belonging to foreign forces crashed Saturday afternoon in Shah Joy district. He said the site had been surrounded by international forces, AP reported

Helicopter crash in Afghanistan kills five Americans

Source : Reuters

(Reuters) - Five U.S. military personnel were killed in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, although there were no immediate details about the cause of the crash.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said the crash occurred on Monday. It happened on the same day that two U.S. troops and five Afghan police and soldiers were killed by a person in an Afghan military uniform in the restive east of the country.

"The cause of the crash is under investigation, however initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the incident," ISAF said in a statement.

The Pentagon said all five killed in the crash were Americans.

New Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel left Afghanistan earlier on Monday after a difficult first trip to Kabul.

His visit was marred by a suicide bomb attack near where he was holding a meeting, and differences with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who accused the United States of colluding with the Taliban.

Helicopter crashes are not uncommon in Afghanistan and the Taliban and others often claim to have shot them down.

Last August, 11 people, including seven U.S. soldiers, were killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan.

The worst such incident was in August 2011, when the Taliban shot down a CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, killing all 38 people on board, including 25 U.S. special operations troops.

(Reporting by Paul Tait and David Alexander; Writing by Jeremy Laurence and David Brunnsstrom; editing by Christopher Wilson)

Afghan govt. says it will take full control of Bagram Prison

Source :   Tehran Times

The Afghan government will take full control of the U.S.-built Bagram Prison on March 9, the spokesman of the Afghan president announced on Sunday.

Aimal Faizi was quoted by Afghanistan’s Tamaddon TV as saying that the decision for the full transfer of the facility to Afghan forces was finalized during a meeting between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, who is the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), in Kabul last week.

At the meeting, it was agreed that control of the other prisons and detention centers currently run by ISAF will also be transferred to the Afghan government in the near future.

In November 2012, Karzai accused U.S. officials of violating a bilateral agreement to fully transfer the Bagram facility to Afghanistan.

The Afghans say that the detainees held at Bagram should be transferred to their control according to an agreement signed by the two countries in March 2012.

However, tension between the two governments has risen on the detainee transfers over the past few months. At the heart of the controversy is the issue of 57 prisoners held in Bagram who have been acquitted by Afghan courts but who have been held by U.S. forces at the prison for more than a month, in defiance of release orders. Afghan officials are also concerned about the status of new detainees being captured by U.S. troops.

Bagram Prison can hold more than 3,000 detainees. The detention center, which lies within Bagram Air Base, about 60 kilometers north of Kabul in Parwan province, is surrounded by U.S. checkpoints and is heavily staffed by U.S. guards.

MS/HG

Australian troops kill two Afghan children: officials

Source :   thenews.com.pk

KANDAHAR: Australian soldiers in southern Afghanistan shot dead two children tending cattle, local officials said on Saturday as the international coalition launched an inquiry into the incident.

Civilian casualties caused by NATO-led troops have been one of the most contentious issues in the campaign against Taliban insurgents, fuelling public anger and often triggering criticism from President Hamid Karzai.

The two children, aged seven and eight, were killed on Thursday morning as Australian soldiers fought back after a Taliban attack in southern Uruzgan province, said provincial governor Amir Mohammad Akhundzada.

"The children were killed by Australian troops, it was a mistaken incident, not a deliberate one," Akhundzada told, adding that insurgents had first shot at a helicopter carrying Australian soldiers.

A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul said he was unable to confirm details.

"We are aware of the reports and we take all such reports very seriously," he said. "An incident assessment team in Uruzgan is now there looking into it."

US Bars Afghan Airline on Suspicion of Drug Trafficking

  RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, January 25 (RIA Novosti) – The US military has barred Afghanistan’s biggest private airline from its list of potential contractors after accusing it of smuggling large amounts of opium into Tajikistan, a major transit route for drugs from the region, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The allegations state that Kam Air ferried “bulk” quantities of opium – the key ingredient in heroin – on civilian flights, the paper said, citing US military officials.

“The US will not do business with those who fund and support illicit activities,” US Army Maj. Gen. Richard Longo, commander of the Task Force 2010 anticorruption unit, told the Journal. “Kam Air is too large of a company not to know what has been going on within its organization.”

Kam Air denied the allegations, with the company’s president and founder, Zamari Kamgar, telling the newspaper it would be impossible to ferry drugs out of Afghanistan given security restrictions at airports. The airline's only passenger flight to Central Asia services the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.

The ban against the airline highlights growing concerns on the part of the US and its allies over the bustling heroin trade in Afghanistan as they prepare to draw down their anti-insurgent operations there.

It also casts fresh light on the role played by ex-Soviet Central Asian countries -- particularly Tajikistan, which shares a porous border with Afghanistan of some 800 miles -- in the massive global drug trade.

The United Nations estimates that Afghanistan supplies some 90% of illegal opiates in the world and that, in 2009, it supplied 84% of the heroin consumed worldwide.

In 2010, almost a quarter of the heroin produced in Afghanistan – some 90 tons out of 380 – passed through Central Asia, about 85 percent of it through Tajikistan, according to a 2012 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

More than 75 percent of this was “destined for the Russia market,” the report said, while a small portion continues on to Europe. Russian drug officials have estimated that their country consumes about 21 percent of the world’s heroin.

According to Kam Air’s website, the airline is planning a direct route from Kabul to Moscow.

The classified US military investigation into Kam Air, which has a fleet of about 16 planes, was launched late last year after the airline bid for an international contract, the Journal said citing Longo, the anticorruption task force commander.

KAM Air operates Boeing 747 and 767 airliners and provides both passenger and cargo services.