Four Afghan aid workers were killed in an ambush Saturday, the latest victims in a bloody Taliban-led insurgency threatening plans for midyear elections. A US soldier died in a mine blast, but the military said it was unclear if it was an attack.
The anti-tank mine exploded under a Humvee in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, killing the soldier and wounding nine others.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Investigators were examining whether the blast, northwest of the city of Ghazni, was a targeted attack on the patrol "or just a leftover mine," Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty said. Afghanistan is littered with old munitions from more than two decades of war.
On Saturday, four Afghans working for a de-mining agency were fatally shot in an ambush in the west of the country, officials said.
The victims had just delivered supplies to de-miners working near Bala Buluk, about 400km west of the capital, Kabul, Patrick Fruchet of the UN de-mining program told reporters.
"We had a team nearby who heard the shots being fired," Fruchet said. "When they got there, they were all dead."
An Afghan intelligence official said bullets found in their two shot-up vehicles were from AK-47 assault rifles and heavy machine guns.
Civilians have borne the brunt of a spate of recent attacks by suspected Taliban insurgents and their allies. The violence has left more than 100 dead in this year's first six weeks, mainly in the country's south and east.
Militants view Afghans working for aid groups or local authorities as fair targets in their campaign to unseat President Hamid Karzai and force foreign troops out of the country.
The UN has warned that elections planned for June could be derailed by the continuing violence, and by sluggish efforts to tame powerful warlords who could influence the vote.
Of the nine American soldiers injured Friday, two were being taken to a US military hospital in Germany. Both were in stable condition, Hilferty said.
All the soldiers were from the 10th Mountain Division. Their names weren't released.
The blast near Ghazni, 80 miles south of Kabul, followed a Jan. 30 explosion at an arms depot near the same city. Eight US soldiers died in what the military said appeared to have been an accident, in the deadliest day for US troops in Afghanistan since 2001.
Peacekeepers in Kabul have also been targeted, losing two soldiers in suicide attacks last month.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS