Islamabad, Pakistan | AFP | A bomb Sunday killed four Pakistani soldiers as they searched for militants linked to the kidnapping of a US-Canadian family who were freed last week. The incident happened near the Kharlachi checkpoint in Kurram district in the restive tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. The family were being …
Read More »Six rockets land near Kabul airport after Mattis arrives: official
Kabul, Afghanistan | AFP | US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Afghanistan Wednesday, the first member of Donald Trump’s cabinet to visit the war-torn country since he pledged to stay the course in America’s longest war. In a sign of the country’s continuing insecurity six rockets landed near Kabul international …
Read More »US watchdog highlights flawed training of Afghan forces
Washington, United States | AFP | US efforts to train Afghanistan’s security forces are being hampered by slapdash instruction, shoddy oversight and governance failures, a watchdog warned Thursday as America sends thousands more troops to the war-torn nation. American assistance to the Afghan army and police has topped $70 billion since …
Read More »From poppy to heroin: Taliban move into Afghan drug production
Kabul, Afghanistan | AFP | The Taliban — which banned poppy cultivation when it ruled Afghanistan — now appears to wield significant control over the war-torn country’s heroin production line, providing insurgents with billions of dollars, officials have told AFP. In 2016 Afghanistan, which produces 80 percent of the world’s …
Read More »Massive truck bomb kills over 80 in Kabul
BBC says driver killed, four journalists injured in Kabul attack London, United Kingdom | AFP | The BBC’s Afghan driver was killed and four of its journalists were injured on Wednesday in a massive truck bomb blast that ripped through Kabul’s diplomatic quarter, the British broadcaster said. “It is with …
Read More »Security forces deny access to site of US blast in Afghanistan
Jalalabad, Afghanistan | AFP | Security forceswere still blocking accessWednesday to the site in eastern Afghanistan where the US dropped a massive bomb on an Islamic State group stronghold six days ago. The US military dropped its GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, dubbed the “Mother of All Bombs”, in combat …
Read More »IS boasts of ‘zero casualties’ after ‘Mother Of All Bombs’
IS denies suffering casualties from huge US bomb in Afghanistan: Amaq Cairo, Egypt | AFP | The Islamic State group denied on Friday it had suffered casualties from the US military’s largest non-nuclear bomb which hit its mountain hideouts in Afghanistan, in a statement on its propaganda agency Amaq. “Security source …
Read More »VIDEO: How the US dropped ‘Mother Of All Bombs’ in Afghanistan
Washington, United States | AFP | The US military on Thursday dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever deployed in combat, targeting an Islamic State complex in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb — better known by its nickname, the “Mother Of All Bombs” — hit …
Read More »ECOMOG’s Gambian gamble
THE LAST WORD: By Andrew M. Mwenda The likely dangers of the Western African states’ attempts to impose a solution on The Gambia The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has resolved to send a military force (ECOMOG) into The Gambia apparently to achieve three interrelated objectives: first to …
Read More »ICC: US may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan
The Hague, Netherlands | AFP | US military forces and the CIA may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan through the “cruel and violent” interrogation of detainees mostly between 2003-2004, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday. There was a “reasonable basis to believe that, in the …
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