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Afghanistan

Former Uruzgan MP Killed In Kandahar

2019-03-24

[ToloNews] Obaidullah Barikzai, former MP from Uruzgan, was killed in an attack by unknown gunnies in neighboring Kandahar province on Saturday. Kandahar Police Chief Maj. Gen. Tadin Khan confirmed the incident and said Barikzai was attacked in Kandahar’s PD6 by unknown gunnies on Saturday afternoon. Barikzai also ran for parliamentary elections from his native province, Uruzgan. Barikzai was a district governor in Chora district in Uruzgan before he won a seat in the Afghan parliament. Last year in October, the Independent Election Commission released a list of the candidates who bit the dust since the beginning of the parliamentary elections in July 2018. According to the list, 10 candidates were killed during this period and Barikzai was the 11th. The candidates are Abdul Jabar Qahraman and Saleh Mohammad Achakzai from Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province; Nasir Mubarez from the Kochis’ constituency from Kandahar; Anwar Niazi from Parwan; Jalal Salehi from Kabul; Sayed Obaidullah Sadat from Ghazni; Ottar Singh Khalsa a candidate of Afghan Sikh and Hindu from Kabul; Hayatullah Khan Rahmani from Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. , were among the candidates who bit the dust in different incidents in various parts of the country.

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India-Pakistan

Blast rocks hotel in Risalpur cantonment

2011-08-27

[Dawn] At least 12 people, including some army and air force personnel, were killed and 17 injured when a powerful kaboom hit a hotel in Risalpur cantonment on Thursday. Nowshera district police chief Mohammad Hussain said a bomb placed on a bicycle exploded by remote control at about 8.30pm when people had gathered outside the Decent Hotel near the busy Risalpur Chowk after Iftar. He said six of the injured were at death's door. Those killed included Habibullah, Abdul Latif, Mohammad Usman, Abdul Hafeez, Hasham, Nazim, Shahbaz, Asif and Latifullah. Police said six of the injured had been taken to the Combined Military Hospital in Risalpur, six to the District Headquarters Hospital in Nowshera and five to the Mardan Complex Hospital. Witnesses said a teenager had parked the bicycle at the hotel and left a few minutes before the kaboom. A large number of people were busy shopping for Eid in the market at the time. Bomb Disposal Squad personnel said 8kgs of explosives had been used in the blast. The front portion of the hotel was destroyed and a couple of adjoining shops were damaged. Local people said military personnel from the Risalpur garrison usually visited the hotel after Iftar. AFP adds: Hayatullah Khan, a police officer who was at the scene, told AFP that the dead included two army and one air force personnel. "A woman and a child were also killed in the attack," he said. TV channels aired footage showing the debris of the hotel and nearby shops destroyed in the blast. Blood could be seen scattered at the hotel's front along with damaged wooden chairs. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... condemned the attack and reiterated the government's resolve to stamp out militancy and terrorism from the country. "Those playing with the lives of innocent people have no religion and no faith, they are following their own nefarious designs," he said in a statement. More than 4,550 people have been killed in suicide kabooms and bomb kabooms in the country over the past four years. Last week, 51 people were killed when a jacket wallah went kaboom!" at a crowded mosque in Khyber Agency.

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India-Pakistan

11 killed, 14 injured in Nowshera blast

2011-08-26

[Pak Daily Times] A powerful remote-controlled bicycle bomb went kaboom! near a busy hotel in Nowshera on Thursday, killing 11 people, wounding 14 and destroying the building. The device went off in the evening as dozens of people were gathered after breaking the day's fast. Like the rest of the Mohammedan world, Pakistain is observing Ramazan, when the faithful fast from dawn to dusk. The bomb was planted on a bicycle parked in the front courtyard of the hotel in Nowshera, police said. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... , told news hounds at the site that 11 people had been killed and 14 injured in the blast. Hayatullah Khan, a police brass hat who was also at the chaotic scene, said that the dead included two army and one air force personnel. "A woman and a child were also killed in the attack," he said. "It was a remote-controlled bomb. The officials of Bomb Disposal Squad are collecting more evidence." Muhammad Hussain, a police brass hat in Nowshera, said, "The hotel was destroyed along with an adjacent hotel. Six nearby shops were badly damaged." The corpse count could rise as several people were critically maimed, the official said. Last week, 51 people were killed when a jacket wallah went kaboom!" at a crowded mosque in Khyber tribal district, in the deadliest attack for three months. US special forces killed al Qaeda chief the late Osama bin Laden ... who is no longer with us, and won't be again... on May 2 in Abbottabad. The northwest suffers from chronic insecurity largely connected to the semi-autonomous tribal belt near Afghanistan which Washington calls the most dangerous place on earth. More than 4,550 people have been killed in suicide kabooms and bomb kabooms in Pakistain during the last four years, many of them carried out by the Taliban and other al Qaeda-linked bully boys. Soon after blast the officials of the law enforcing agencies and police reached the scene. The victims could not be immediately ascertained. They also rushed the injured to nearby District Headquarter Hospital Nowshera and Sheikh Maltoon Hospital, Mardan. President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... on Thursday strongly condemned the kaboom. The president expressed his condolences with the families of those who bit the dust in the terrorist act. He said the government and people were determined to defeat terrorism and such gruesome acts could deter the resolve of the nation to defeat terrorists. Zardari asked the law enforcement agencies to take measures to protect people from terrorist acts. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has also condemned the kaboom. Expressing deep condolences with the bereaved families, the prime minister directed the law enforcement agencies to investigate the unfortunate incident and bring the perpetrators to justice. Gilani reiterated the government's resolve to stamp out the menace of militancy and terrorism from the country.

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India-Pakistan

Suicide bomber kills 10 in Swabi: police

2011-03-31

A jacket wallah on a cycle of violence went kaboom!" near a police checkpoint in Swabi on Wednesday, killing ten people and wounding more than 20, police and hospital officials said. Police chief Abdullah Jan said the checkpoint was close to a camp set up by a religious political party for a public meeting in the town. "Seven people was struck down in his prime and three more gave up the ghost in the hospital," he said. "We have recovered the body parts of the suicide bomber." Nurul Wahid, the doctor in charge of the emergency ward at the state-run Swabi hospital, confirmed the toll. "We have 10 bodies. The dead included two coppers also," he said. A total of 21 people were receiving treatment, Wahid added. The meeting was planned by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) party led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Known as Mullah Diesel during the war against the Soviets, his sympathies for the Taliban have never been tempered by honesty ... The event was cancelled after the bombing. Rehman was on his way to the venue when the blast happened, party front man Jalil Jan told AFP. "He is safe and the meeting has been cancelled," Jan told AFP. "We can't immediately identify the attackers. We don't know who is involved. But we can say the target appears to be the JUI leadership. "Six party supporters were martyred and seven maimed," he said. Police official Hayatullah Khan told AFP Rehman's convoy was set to enter the town when the blast hit. "We were lined up and party members came out from a nearby reception camp. Suddenly there was a huge blast amid welcome slogans by party workers. Shrapnel hit me and I received injuries to my head and leg," he said.

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India-Pakistan

Mullah Omar not in Pakistan, Taliban commander says

2009-10-01

Those Predator attacks must be even more effective than I realized. Good. As it is said, you can run, but then you'll only die tired. [Dawn] Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is not in Pakistan and the United States is only saying he is there to justify an expansion of its drone missile strikes, a Taliban commander said on Wednesday. The Washington Post said this week US officials had expressed concern over the ability of Omar and his lieutenants to launch attacks into Afghanistan from sanctuaries around the Pakistani city of Quetta. Pakistan has long denied that Omar or any of his commanders are based in Pakistan but it has been unable to dispel the suspicion in Washington and Kabul. Several Taliban members have been detained in Pakistan. Mounting US concern about Omar and his so-called Quetta shura, or leadership council, comes as the United States weighs options on how to deal with an intensifying Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Possibilities include sending more combat troops and trainers for the Afghan army and stepping up strikes by pilotless drone aircraft on militants on the Pakistani side of the border. A Taliban commander, Hayatullah Khan, told Reuters by telephone that the entire Taliban leadership was in Afghanistan. 'Pakistan is not safe for us. More of our people have been captured in Pakistan than in Afghanistan so everybody is here including Mullah Omar,' said Khan, who said he was speaking from Afghanistan, although he declined to be specific. 'The Americans are making the Quetta shura an excuse for an expansion of their drone strikes to Balochistan, nothing else,' said Khan. Pakistan, battling al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban militants in NWFP province, to the north of Balochistan, insists that the Taliban leadership is not in present in Queta. But many analysts say Pakistan is acting only against militants which are a threat to itself, like the Pakistani Taliban, while leaving alone those focused on fighting in Afghanistan or on targeting India. US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson told the Washington Post the Quetta shura was 'high on Washington's list'. The United States intensified its attacks by pilotless drones on militants in northwestern Pakistani border sanctuaries last year as the Afghan insurgency intensified. The United States has launched nearly 60 strikes in northwest Pakistan since the beginning of 2008, but none has been in Baluchistan. The strikes are deeply unpopular in a country where many people are suspicious of US designs in the region. Pakistan officially objects to the drone attacks, saying they violate its sovereignty and the civilian casualties they inflict inflame public anger. US officials say the strikes are carried out under an agreement with Islamabad that allows Pakistani leaders to decry the attacks in public. Pakistan is already facing a low-level insurgency by separatists Balochistan and has decried any suggestion of an expansion of the US drone war to the province. The US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, said in an assessment leaked to the media last week the Afghan insurgency was clearly supported from Pakistan and senior leaders of insurgent groups were based there.

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India-Pakistan

Hayatullah's widow killed in bomb blast

2007-11-18

MIR ALI: The widow of tribal journalist Hayatullah Khan was killed on Saturday in a bomb blast at her home in North Waziristan, while her children were unhurt, the family said. "Whuddyouse mean, youse missed da kidz?" “A bomb went off close to a boundary wall of her room killing her instantly,” Ehsanullah Khan, brother of late Hayatullah Khan, told Daily Times. “She was sleeping on the ground in her room and the five children were in another room when the bomb planted right next to the boundary wall of her room went off,” he said. The incident took place at around 3am on Saturday in Hurmuz village, according to the family. Ehsanullah told the BBC that the people who had killed Hayatullah were “responsible for the Saturday incident.”

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Afghanistan

We didn't attack Bhutto: Taliban

2007-10-23

Afghanistan’s Taliban do not attack outside Afghanistan and were not involved in an attack on former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi last week, an insurgent commander said on Monday. "Wudn't us. We got more class dan dat!" Around 139 people were killed in two blasts that targeted Bhutto’s welcome rally on October 18. She later said a “brotherly country” had warned her that suicide squads from the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Pakistani Taliban and Karachi-based militants were out to get her. She also alluded to enemies in the government that backed militants and were plotting against her. But a commander of Afghanistan’s Taliban, Mullah Hayatullah Khan, denied involvement. “The Afghan Taliban are not involved in attacks in foreign countries,” Khan said via telephone from Quetta an undisclosed location. “I want to tell you, we are not involved in the attack on Benazir Bhutto’s convoy,” he said.

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Afghanistan

Afghan police raid Taliban ‘suicide prep school’

2007-05-06

Afghan police acting on a tip stormed a madrassa in western Farah province seizing 22 Taliban members, according to officials. The raid targeted well known Taliban commander Mullah Hayatullah Khan but was not amongst those arrested. Most of those arrested are teenagers thought to be undertaking suicide bomb indoctrination. Farah province has recently seen an upsurge in Taliban related violence including a spate of suicide bombings and high profile assassinations. The targeting of Mullah Hayatullah Khan and other known commanders is the latest tactic to be widely employed by ISAF and Afghan forces intent on spoiling the Taliban’s military objectives. Over the last week Taliban commanders have been targeted in Khost, Helmand, Farah, Zabul and Kandahar. A group of Taliban in Kandahar responsible for bombing the Alokozai tribal elder Mullah Naqib was seized during one of these operations. According to an ISAF statement, sub-commander Engineer Majid was shot twice by Afghan police during a fierce clash between militants and police in Khost province. They subsequently arrested him as he fled the battlefield seeking medical treatment at a local health clinic . Last week in Farah, police along with the help of local villagers also killed and captured Taliban commanders attempting to abduct Indian engineers. ISAF commanders have recently touted their success in targeting Taliban leaders. “The Taliban extremist leadership in the south have been taken off guard by Operation Achilles and are on the defensive at this stage,” said Major General Ton van Loon, an ISAF regional commander. “We have inflicted serious damage to their command and control infrastructure as well as their ability to re-supply.”

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Afghanistan

Blinky urges more kabooms

2007-04-22

The fugitive Taliban leader Mulla Muhammad Omar has urged his followers to step up suicide attacks on foreign and Afghan troops and remain united, a Taliban commander said. Taliban commander Mulla Hayatullah Khan told Reuters late on Friday by satellite phone from Quetta an undisclosed location that Omar had contacted senior and regional commanders and congratulated them for carrying out “successful” attacks in recent weeks. He would not give details as to how and when Mulla Omar contacted the commanders. “Taliban mujahideen, through unity in their ranks, should continue and increase their guerrilla and suicide attacks on occupation forces and the infidels will soon run away,” Khan quoted Omar as saying. “Mulla Omar has ordered us to liberate our country, (and) we should step up attacks on occupation forces and their puppet Afghans,” he said. The Taliban refer to Western-backed President Hamid Karzai and his associates as puppets. Mulla Omar, who has a $10 million US government bounty on his head, told his fighters to try not to harm innocent civilians during their offensives, Khan said. Separately on Saturday, small blasts occurred in two cities of northern Afghanistan, witnesses said. The explosions, one outside a government building and one outside a shop, caused slight damage but no injuries. In Kabul, a passer-by sustained minor wounds in an apparently random rocket attack near a ministry on the city outskirts. Taliban insurgents Saturday grimaced fearsomly and vowed a new round of attacks against Afghan and foreign troops in the war-torn country, promising to focus more attention on the relatively-peaceful north. Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the operation would target the country’s northern and southern parts.

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Afghanistan

Suicide bomber kills ten: Afghan police

2007-04-17

A suicide bomber on Monday blew himself up among policemen doing their morning exercises in the northeastern Afghan city of Kunduz killing ten and wounding 25, the Interior Ministry said. Separately, a suicide bomber attacked a private US security firm in southern Afghanistan killing four Afghans working for the company and wounding another, officials said. NATO-led forces also killed several ‘key’ Taliban leaders in a series of air strikes and raids targeting militants in southern Afghanistan last week, according to an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) press statement. Taliban insurgents, fighting to oust foreign troops from Afghanistan, have launched a wave of suicide attacks in the south and east but attacks in the north have been rare. Taliban commander Hayatullah Khan claimed responsibility and said there would be more attacks. “It was a successful strike and such bombings will continue,” he said. “All of our suicide bombers are Afghans and they are waiting for orders in various Afghan cities.” Suicide attacks in Afghanistan, almost unheard of three years ago, surged from about 20 in 2005 to over 140 in 2006. There have also been numerous attacks this year. Earlier, on Saturday a suicide bomber killed seven policemen and a civilian in an attack on a police station in the eastern town of Khost. The security firm US Protection and Investigations said a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle had blown himself up near a convoy and killed four employees while wounding another. Separately in the eastern Paktika province, police and US-led coalition forces attacked suspected Taliban insurgents crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan, killing 10 militants and wounding 15, the provincial governor said on Sunday. Meanwhile, last week, the NATO-led ISAF conducted several raids in the insurgency-hit southern province of Helmand. Approximately 5,000 Afghan and foreign troops were involved in the major operation, said an ISAF press release. The release stated that ISAF, in joint operations with Afghan forces, launched a series of attacks and precision strikes against Taliban extremists in Helmand resulting in the elimination of several key extremist leaders. No details on the identities or ranks of the Taliban leaders, or the locations or dates of the attacks were given. “We fully realise the influence these Taliban extremist leaders have on the population of southern Afghanistan, who have said that they feel like hostages in their own communities,” the ISAF Commander for southern Afghanistan Major General Ton van Loon said. Around 37,000 NATO-led troops and a separate force of nearly 12,000 US-led coalition soldiers are in Afghanistan to hunt down the rebels trying to topple the US-backed government in Kabul. Separately the coalition said it had captured eight Taliban insurgents early on Monday. It revealed that four of them were allegedly linked to a “known, high-ranking Taliban leader” while the remainder were seized for allegedly running a militant “safe-house” in the Barmal district of Paktika province.

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Terror Networks

Bin Laden 50, if still alive

2007-03-10

(Reuters) SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan - Osama bin Laden, if he’s alive, celebrates his 50th birthday on Saturday, and his friends in the Taliban prayed for his long life. The al-Qaida leader’s long silence has fueled speculation that the world’s most-wanted fugitive may have died, though many in the international intelligence community reckon Islamist militant Web sites would circulate word of his death. Why would they possibly want to hide the death of the leader of their international movement? “He is alive. I am 100 percent sure,” Taliban spokesman Mullah Hayatullah Khan told Reuters, adding that senior leaders were in touch with bin Laden, reinforcing a widely held view that he is hiding near the rugged Pakistan-Afghanistan border.That suggests some ambiguity as to which side of the border he is on Khan said special prayers were offered by Taliban fighters in camps in Afghanistan to mark bin Laden’s birth on March 10, 1957, in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah. “We prayed that Allah may give him 200 years to live,” Khan said,” by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location. Hope that works out for ya “When we woke up today, we offered collective and long prayers for him because he is a great mujahid (holy warrior).” The most recent videotape of bin Laden was released in late 2004 -- subsequent tapes released were identified as old footage -- and around half a dozen audio tapes surfaced in the first half of 2006. But a long silence since then has fueled rumors that bin Laden is unwell, or dead, though the United States fears that the al-Qaida network he founded is rebuilding its base in Pakistani tribal lands, and has forged ties with affiliates in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Dead or alive, bin Laden is revered by some as the symbolic leader of a global jihad, or holy war, against the United States, following the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that killed more than 3,000 people. By some... what a quaint way to put it “He is the man who raised voices against excesses being committed on Muslims all over the world,” the Taliban spokesman said. Well, him and every single professor at Berkeley, Harvard, etc. The Taliban were ousted from power by U.S.-backed forces in late 2001 after their leaders refused to surrender bin Laden following the al-Qaida attacks on the United States. The attacks triggered the largest manhunt in history, with over 12,000 U.S.-led troops scouring the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan for over five years.Geez, I wonder why they haven't been able to find him in Afghanistan The United States also announced a $25 million reward for any information leading to the arrest or death of bin Laden, but leads on his whereabouts have been few and far between. Intelligence on the movements of his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al Zawahri, is gathered more frequently. Well that makes sense

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Afghanistan

Taliban prepare for spring offensive in Afghanistan

2007-02-12

Taliban fighters are continuing to reinforce a key southern town against an expected NATO offensive more than a week after taking it over, ending a controversial four-month truce. More than 1,500 villagers have fled the town of Musa Qala, in the Taliban heartland, in fear of renewed fighting. “More than 300 fighters are in Musa Qala,” senior Taliban commander Mulla Hayatullah Khan said from a secret base on Sunday. “They have been alerted and military supplies are being provided from Pakistan other areas.” Residents say the Taliban are reinforcing their troops with heavy weapons, but NATO says there is no evidence of force build-up. The Taliban decided to take Musa Qala after the brother of the local Taliban commander was killed in a NATO airstrike, locals say. The commander, Mullah Ghafour, was himself killed in another airstrike soon after the takeover. NATO says the retaking of Musa Qala is up to the Afghan government and will be done when and how Kabul decides. However, military analysts say the assault will be led by foreign troops and officers. Separately, a member of the US military died of a gunshot wound in northern Afghanistan on Sunday in an incident under investigation by military authorities, a US military statement said. The service member died in Balkh province, the military said.

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