German soldiers traveling to the scene of a deadly firefight with Taliban insurgents accidentally killed six Afghan troops, the Afghan military said on Saturday. Three Germans died in the firefight with the militants.
The friendly fire incident on Friday took place in northern Kunduz Province, where German forces were sharply criticized in September when they ordered an airstrike on two tanker trucks that had been captured by the Taliban. Up to 142 people died, many of them civilians.
The German central command confirmed Friday’s incident, but put the number of Afghan troop casualties at five. The deaths occurred amid heavy fighting between German troops and militants near Kunduz city.
Meanwhile in Kabul, the speaker of the lower house of parliament criticized Afghan President Hamid Karzai for blaming the international community on Thursday for the vote fraud controversy over last year’s disputed presidential election.
Yunus Qanooni blasted Karzai’s claim of foreign interference in drafting the nation’s electoral law, which the president had sought to amend this week to expand his control over the country’s institutions. Karzai was rebuffed by parliament.
“This is the house of the people and all the members have been elected,” Qanooni said. “It’s not possible that we would be influenced by foreigners.”
Karzai called US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday after the administration of US President Barack Obama expressed dismay at his remarks — a sign of the increasingly uneasy relations between the Afghan leader and key international allies whose forces support his weak government against a powerful Taliban insurgency.
Kunduz provincial spokesman Muhboballuh Sayedi said Afghan commanders were meeting on Saturday with coalition forces to discuss the incident. The Afghan Defense Ministry condemned the deaths of its soldiers.
Speaking during a visit to South Africa, German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg expressed sorrow over the friendly fire deaths and said German soldiers were doing everything possible to avoid such incidents.
“But in a war ... we experience the bitter truth that such incidents can never be fully excluded,” the minister was quoted as saying by news weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
‘DECREE 147’: Tech giants operating in Vietnam must verify accounts via phone numbers or IDs, and must provide users’ personal data to authorities on request New Vietnamese Internet rules requiring Facebook and TikTok to verify user identities and hand over data to authorities came into force yesterday, in what critics say is the latest attack on freedom of expression. Under “Decree 147,” all tech giants operating in Vietnam must verify users’ accounts via their phone numbers or Vietnamese identification numbers and store that information alongside their full name and date of birth. They must provide that data to authorities on request and remove any content that the government regards as “illegal” within 24 hours. All social media sites had been given 90 days to provide data on “the
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
RSS