Posted on 06/02/2007 5:28:29 AM PDT by leadpenny
18 minutes ago
KABUL, Afghanistan - A boat crossing a river in Afghanistan's most dangerous province sank on Saturday, and at least 60 people were killed, including Taliban militants, the Defense Ministry said.
The boat sank while crossing the Helmand River, which snakes through Helmand province, the world's leading opium poppy region and site of fierce battles the last several months. Hundreds of Taliban insurgents are believed to be in Helmand.
The Afghan army was investigating to see how many Taliban insurgents and how many civilians were on board, the ministry said.
Elsewhere, suspected Taliban militants attacked a local police commander's home, killing five of his family members and sparking a gunbattle with police that left 10 insurgents dead, an official said.
The attack in the southeastern province of Ghazni killed the commander's wife, two sons and two nephews, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. The commander worked for Afghanistan's auxiliary police, a system of backup officers who supplement the country's regular police force.
Taliban militants often target police and government officials. More than 1,900 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count based on U.S., NATO and Afghan officials.
At a rally in Pakistan, a man described as the Taliban's new top field commander vowed in an audiotaped message to liberate Afghanistan from "American slavery," said Abdul Sattar Chishti, the cleric who organized the event.
Chishti said more than 12,000 people listened to the speech by the brother of Mullah Dadullah, the top Taliban commander who was killed in a U.S. operation last month in southern Afghanistan.
He said Dadullah Mansoor vowed to avenge his brother's death and those of others killed while fighting U.S., NATO and Afghan forces.
"The blood of my brother will never go waste. We will never forget his sacrifices, and the role of other martyrs. We will complete Dadullah's mission by expelling Americans and liberating Afghanistan," Chishti quoted Mansoor as saying.
It was not immediately possible to verify Chishti's claims about the rally at Killi Nalai, a village about 45 miles west of Quetta near the Afghan border. Although pro-Taliban elders have held similar rallies in northwestern tribal regions, protests the size of the one organized in Killi Nalai are rare.
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Associated Press writer Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
Q: What do you call 60 dead Taliban at the bottom of a river?
A: A good start.
I just LOVE it.
This is how they should be getting killed....by the boatload.
War news!
The article stated that the reporter didn’t know how many were Taliban and how many were civilians.
Now, that would have been a shame.
Fish food?
They need bigger boats.
Allahu akbar.
Abdul !! Hurry up with those 4320 virgins.
“I’M KING OF THE WORLD!!” *blub* *blub* *blub*
Thanks for the clarification. My humor was divorced from the reality of the tragedy, at least insofar as innocent civilians were concerned.
This is a humanitarian disaster of the highest order! We must send tissues at once!
There is more than one way to get these pigs into hell.
No worries. The title was misleading.
Hopefully somebody can salvage the boat.
A prayer for the innocents, of course. But you have to wonder how many truly innocent were in that boat with those militants. Lie down with dogs; drown in a river of fleas.
Um, did you read to see that the reporter couldn’t state how many were Taliban and how many were civilians?
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