Two Afghan guards were killed yesterday when suicide bombers and attackers besieged the office of a logistics company working with foreign forces, near the NATO-led force’s western headquarters.
Western troops were deployed to quash the attack at the offices of Monaco-based international firm ES-KO on the outskirts of Herat city, where NATO soldiers passed control to Afghan forces four months ago.
It happened a few hundred meters from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in western Afghanistan, which is Italian-led, and Herat’s airport.
The attack raises questions about security in the relatively peaceful province, handed over in July as part of plans for the 140,000 mainly US foreign troops to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
However, in Brussels yesterday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted its mission in Afghanistan was “moving in the right direction” despite a string of headline-grabbing “spectacular” attacks in recent weeks.
These included a car bomb on Saturday which killed 17 people, including 13 foreigners, in the deadliest single attack on NATO in Kabul in 10 years of war.
One foreign soldier was among five people injured in the latest attack, according to Herat governor’s spokesman Mohayddin Noori.
A reporter saw a wounded Italian soldier being walked away from the scene, but a spokesman for the NATO-led ISAF could not confirm any injuries to its personnel.
Officials said that the attack happened when two suicide bombers detonated a car bomb at the gates of the office, allowing three accomplices to get inside.
“Five attackers were killed along with two guards working for ES-KO company,” Noori told a press conference after the attack finished.
“Five people — one policeman, one ISAF soldier and one intelligence officer along with two other guards of the company — were wounded in today’s attack,” Noori said.
The Taliban, leaders of the decade--long insurgency in Afghanistan since the late 2001 US-led invasion ousted them from power, were not immediately reachable for comment on the attack.
The killings came the day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a regional conference in Istanbul that there was no hope for peace in Afghanistan without help from neighbors such as Pakistan, where insurgents have rear bases.
The ISAF spokesman in western Afghanistan, who declined to be quoted by name, said it had provided ground and air support to yesterday’s operation, which took place outside the compound of Regional Command West.
Noori said that ISAF helicopters had been scrambled.
Noor Khan Nekzad, a regional police spokesman, said foreign forces killed the insurgents, but the ISAF spokesman could not confirm this.
One witness, who did not give his name, said he saw several wounded people evacuated after two men with guns and rocket-propelled grenades ran into the office and opened fire.
Attacks on contractors working with ISAF happen relatively frequently in Afghanistan.
ES-KO works at a number of locations throughout Afghanistan and its recent projects have included extending the runway at Herat airport.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home