Hundreds of police swarmed through a southern Afghan village yesterday, searching house-to-house for the assailant who sprayed a US company's helicopter with gunfire, killing the Australian pilot and wounding two passengers.
Police arrested 30 suspected Taliban members and seized five AK-47 assault rifles in Thaloqan village, about 60km southwest of the provincial capital, Kandahar, said a police official, General Salim Khan.
Four foreigners and an Afghan interpreter had traveled in the helicopter on Sunday to inspect the construction of a clinic.
They were about to leave when a man with a Kalashnikov rifle attacked the helicopter and fled, said Khalid Pashtoon, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province.
The chopper's Australian pilot was killed and an American woman who was helping set up the clinic was seriously wounded, a US Embassy spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
A security guard also suffered serious injuries, the US Embassy said in a statement issued late on Sunday.
Officials said the helicopter belonged to The Louis Berger Group, an engineering firm based in East Orange, New Jersey. The company oversees infrastructure projects in southern Afghanistan.
In Australia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday that the pilot came from South Australia state, but declined to release his name or other details until the man's relatives were informed of his death.
"It's very sad that he's gone," Downer said. "He was there to help the people of Afghanistan."
Afghan forces immediately began a manhunt in the area, where rebels of Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban regime are active. Pashtoon said the village was home to the Hezb-e-Islami group of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a key Taliban ally.
After the shooting, about 100 US troops and 100 Afghan forces cordoned off the site as a US military helicopter hoisted away the bullet-riddled chopper.
In a statement, the US military condemned the shooting as a "senseless and violent criminal attack," and called on tribal elders and other locals to hand over the assailant.
A man claiming to speak for the Taliban, Abdul Samad, telephoned reporters in Kabul about six hours after the attack and said the hard-line Islamic militia was responsible.
That claim could not be independently confirmed, and Samad's description of the shooting -- which he said involved eight guerrillas -- was at odds with witness accounts.
A US military quick reaction force evacuated the injured people to a military hospital at Kandahar airfield, said military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty.
Insurgent attacks in lawless southern and eastern Afghanistan have become commonplace over the past year, despite continuing efforts to hunt down the Taliban and their allies.
US military officials say the rebels have started going after "soft" civilian targets after incurring heavy losses in battles with coalition forces in the middle of last year.
The attacks appear to be aimed at undermining the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai and reconstruction efforts in the country, which is trying to emerge from a quarter-century of war.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS