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Afghanistan

Videotape of Jalalabad Attack Released

2011-02-23

[Tolo News] A videotape obtained by TOLOnews from the Kabul Bank surveillance camera shows that a suicide attacker armed with AK-47 shoots to death civilians stuck in the building. The footage is not for the squeamish. However it also illustrates the sheeplike nature of humans. There were enough people there to swarm him with only one or two dead, but instead they remained in their flock and lots of them got killed. The suicide attacker has been jugged by security forces. The suicide attacker says it was enjoyable to kill people. "I shot numerous people. I was told people in grey are pagans and I was shooting them with joy," the jugged bomber said. ... thereby illustrating another characteristic of Islam that sets it apart from the religions of civilized folk: in India or Mongolia or Brazil pagans have just as many rights as anyone else. Nor does one group of citizens have the right to randomly bump off any other group. It's that eccentric idea of the law applying to everyone equally. More than 40 non-combatants were killed and nearly 80 others were maimed on Saturday during the raid into a branch of Kabul Bank in eastern Jalalabad city. Senior provincial security officials said majority of the victims were civilians. They're more likely to be unarmed... Religious leaders strongly slammed the attack, calling it against Islamic ethics. "Anyone who kills innocent people, should be punished under the Islamic rules, to be a lesson to others," said Fazl Ahmad, an Afghan holy man. Islam is the only religion that allows any idiot to pass on the guilt or innocence of anybody else. Everybody else has courts that are part of a legal system, however dysfunctional it may be. Nangarhar Police Chief urged justice organisations to severely punish the captured suicide attacker. "I suggest to justice organisations that such criminals should be punished in public, and people also expect this," Ali Shah Paktiawal, Nangarhar Police Chief, told TOLOnews. Records showed that more than 120 civilians have bit the dust in violence across the country and another 200 have been injured.

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Afghanistan

20 Insurgents Killed in Afghan, Nato Operations

2011-01-25

[Tolo News] At least 12 hard boyz were killed in joint operations launched by Afghan and Nato forces in eastern Afghanistan, provincial officials said. Afghan and Nato forces killed 13 Death Eaters including their commander in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province on Sunday, Ali Shah Paktiawal, police chief of Nangarhar told TOLOnews. Meanwhile, ...back at the ranch... seven hard boyz were killed in Afghan and coalition forces' operation in Sarkano district of Kundar province on Monday. Local officials said the operation was launched this morning to wipe out hard boyz from the area. There have been no military and civilian casualties in the operations, officials added. Taliban have not yet commented about the operations. Police officials said they will intensify their military operations in some villages to clear the province of bad boys.

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Afghanistan

Taliban claims credit for Kabul kaboom

2008-09-25

(AKI) - The Taliban has claimed responsibility for a bomb blast that killed two people in the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday. The bomb blast is believed to have targeted Kabul's police chief of criminal investigations, Ali Shah Paktiawal, who was wounded in the attack. An Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman said two of the police official's bodyguards were killed. The explosion occurred as police were investigating the scene of a crime, where three officers were killed by a roadside bomb the previous night.

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Afghanistan

Afghan police lift siege of Dostum's house

2008-02-04

Afghan police lifted a brief siege of the house of former ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in Kabul on Sunday after he and a group of around 50 armed men beat up a former ally, a police chief said. Dostum beat up his former election manager Akbar Bay late on Saturday, said Kabul police chief Salem Hasaas. One of Bay’s bodyguards was shot and Dostum and his men fled to the warlord’s house, Hasaas said. Bay was taken to hospital. Dozens of police armed with assault rifles and machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks surrounded Dostum’s house in a relatively upmarket part of Kabul and other officers took up positions on the roofs of neighbouring houses. One shot was fired, but it was unclear where it came from. Shortly afterwards, police began to withdraw. “We have received orders to hand the case over to the judiciary for investigation,” said the head of the Kabul police criminal investigations Ali Shah Paktiawal. The burly Dostum rose to command ethnic Uzbek fighters allied to the Soviet Union during the 1979-89 occupation, then switched sides as Soviet troops withdrew. He then formed and broke alliances several times during the civil war, meanwhile running much of northern Afghanistan as his personal fiefdom. Police officers outside Dostum’s house said the former warlord briefly appeared on the roof of his residence and abused them before his guards pulled him indoors. A spokesman for Dostum said there was no truth in the accusations against the former warlord and warned of unrest if police tried to arrest him. “This is a plot against General Dostum, the government is trying to undermine him,” said spokesman and member of parliament Mohammad Alem Sayeh. “The government should know that if it tries to capture Dostum, then seven or eight provinces in the north will turn against the government.”

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Afghanistan

Suicide Blast in Kabul Kills 2

2007-11-27

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A suicide car bomber triggered a huge blast Tuesday near two armored vehicles used by U.S.-led coalition troops in Kabul, killing at least two civilians and destroying the wall of a nearby house, witnesses and officials said. The bomber damaged the armored vehicles and wounded four people, though none of the troops was injured, said Lt. Col. David Johnson, a coalition spokesman. At least two civilians were killed in the blast, said Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, director of criminal investigations for the Kabul police. Four other people, including two Pakistani road construction workers, were injured in the blast, said Dr. Mohammad Musa, from Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan hospital. U.S. and Afghan security forces raced to the scene, where broken glass and pieces of the bomber's vehicle littered the street in a neighborhood of the capital where many foreigners live. The body of one victim lay in the street. A day earlier, a blast ripped through a car south of the capital, killing four civilians, police said. The explosion occurred in the Musayi district of Kabul province, where a bomb had been freshly planted in the muddy, unpaved road, regional police commander Gen. Zalmai Oryakhail said. Also Monday, a remote-controlled roadside bomb struck an Afghan army vehicle in the eastern province of Paktia, killing four soldiers and wounding two, Din Mohammad Darwish, spokesman for the provincial governor, said. In protest of the government's response to an attack on a traveling group of lawmakers earlier this month, dozens of lawmakers walked out of parliament Monday, led by lower house speaker Mohammad Yunus Qanuni who is also a top opposition figure. Qanuni is a leading figure in the National Front, the largest opposition group challenging U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai's authority and the walkout is likely to deepen Afghanistan's political divide. Qanuni said the government had ignored parliament's demand for the suspension of officials in the northern province of Baghlan where a suicide bomber attacked a visiting delegation of lawmakers on Nov. 6. Some 77 people, including 61 students and six lawmakers were killed, and more than 100 were wounded in the blast and the subsequent shooting by panicked guards, officials said. One of the lawmakers killed was a key opposition member.

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Afghanistan

Blast injures 16 in Afghanistan

2006-10-11

A remote-controlled bomb planted on a parked bicycle exploded near a police bus in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, wounding more than 10 policemen and several civilians. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Senior police officer Ali Shah Paktiawal said the bomb was detonated as the bus carrying police passed in a densely crowded neighbourhood. Witnesses said three bystanders and three people in a passing car were also wounded. Meanwhile on Tuesday, President Hamid Karzai's office insisted that the people of Afghanistan would not turn to support the Taliban, despite problems facing their destitute and volatile country. Spokesman Karim Rahimi was reacting to a warning by the NATO commander in Afghanistan that 70 percent of Afghans could begin to side with the Taliban if there was no major change in the security situation within six months.

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Afghanistan

Suicide attack on NATO Afghan convoy injures six, 14 die in other violence

2006-10-03

A suicide blast in the Afghan capital wounded three NATO soldiers and three civilians on Monday, while officials said 14 people had died in other attacks blamed on the extremist Taliban movement. The bomber blew himself up near a NATO convoy on a busy road in Kabul that is frequently used by international troops in the east of the heavily secured and increasingly jittery city. Three passers-by were wounded and three NATO peacekeepers had minor injuries. Police arrested a second man with explosives and wires on his body at the bomb site, said criminal investigation police chief Ali Shah Paktiawal, alleging that the man had planned to attack him when he arrived at the scene to investigate the first blast. Sources said the wounded soldiers were French but the French military said it could not comment immediately. A purported spokesman for the Taliban, Mohammad Hanif, claimed responsibility for the attack.

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Afghanistan

4 terrorists arrested in Afghan capital

2006-09-20

Four terrorists with explosives were captured in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, a police officer told Xinhua Tuesday. One of them was detained on Tuesday, said Ali Shah Paktiawal, criminal director of the Kabul police, adding three others were captured on Sunday evening. “One terrorist was a university student in Kabul, and another one had studied in a religious school in a country neighboring Afghanistan...” One terrorist was a university student in Kabul, and another one had studied in a religious school in a country neighboring Afghanistan, he said. The police have seized explosives and bombs from the four detainees, who are all Afghans. Kabul, a former relatively calm city, is plagued by frequent suicide bombings in the past two months. On Monday, a suicide bombing ripped off a road in eastern Kabul, killing three policemen and injuring eight persons. On Sept. 8, a suicide car blast killed 15 people including two U.S. soldiers just outside the U.S. embassy. Earlier this month, the U.S.-led coalition forces warned a suicide bomber cell was working in Kabul and remained a serious threat. Meanwhile, a senior Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah recently claimed the Taliban had registered 500 fighters ready to be used as suicide bombers in this volatile country. From the Khaleej Times: the four mooks are linked to al-Qaeda.

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Afghanistan

Bomb Blast Kills 3 in Afghanistan

2006-09-17

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A bomb blast south of the Afghan capital killed three people and wounded another on Saturday, police said. The remote-controlled device went off as a car carrying four people passed by on the main road in Musayi district, Kabul province, said Ali Shah Paktiawal, a police official. The victims were all Afghans working for a local private security firms that provide services to local and international non-governmental organizations, said Mohammad Daud Nadim, regional police chief.

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