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KANDAHAR: Taliban insurgents armed with bombs, automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the Kandahar police headquarters Saturday during a bloody assault on the southern Afghan city that killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens more. The bold afternoon raid showed insurgents are still able to launch deadly strikes on heavily fortified government institutions despite the past year's influx of US troops into Kandahar province, the Taliban's birthplace. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Fifteen of those killed were Afghan police officers, said provincial Governor Toryalai Wesa. Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said three Afghan soldiers, two civilians and...

MOSCOW (AP) - A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba said Tuesday U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Qur'an by putting it into a toilet, although he added he never witnessed it himself. Airat Vakhitov, who described himself as a former imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic in southern Russia, is one of seven men released from Guantanamo in 2004 and returned to Russia. He and the six others were held in Russia for three months, then released a year ago. Vakhitov said at a news conference organized by the state RIA-Novosti...

Bound, masked and surrounded by heavily armed U.S. Marines, 20 of the most dangerous al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners arrived for indefinite incarceration at this remote Caribbean naval base. The prisoners' arrival Friday came four months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The prisoners face intense interrogation, especially concerning the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, accused by the United States of orchestrating the attacks. "These are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, ...

Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera has broadcast a tape that appears to show one of the 11 September hijackers reading his last will and testament. The channel also aired a brief clip of wanted Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, who is shown kneeling beside his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, as al-Zawahri praises the actions of the bombers. The channel identifies the hijacker as Ahmad al-Haznawi al-Ghamdi, a name which closely resembles that of Ahmed al-Ghamdi, who was on Flight 175 that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Al-Jazeera said the footage - which it says it checked...

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATO commanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said. A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had...

(CBS) A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways - including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Even after determining he was not a terrorist, Murat Kurnaz says the torture continued. Kurnaz tells his story for the first time on American television this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk born and raised in Germany, went to Pakistan in late 2001 at age 19 to study Islam and...

My eyes broke through the dried crust between my lashes. I was freezing, curled in the fetal position on my cot with an Army-issue sleeping bag wrapped around my body. I didn’t know where I was. I had never woken up here before. I tried to gain a sense of my surroundings using only my peripheral vision. The room was dark and damp. I looked at the indigo light on my digital watch. 0608. Where was I? … “Gah!” I shuddered like a little girl as a fat drop of arctic water fell on my face from the leaking roof....

OUTPOST NOLEN, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Elite U.S. special forces soldiers are relieving insurgent pressure on American outposts in the volatile Arghandab Valley with a series of night attacks on suspected Taliban hideouts. The raids, backed by a "Spectre" C-130 gunship and Afghan commandos, began four days ago in the village of Khosrow Sofla, and followed weeks of near-daily attacks by insurgents on American bases near the town of Jelawar. "We considered it an area of Taliban sanctuary, or at least of tacit or semi-permissive support," said U.S. Army Major Brendan Raymond, of Woodbridge, Virginia. Last month, the U.S. military said...

WASHINGTON, June 16, 2010 – Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, is the key to success in Afghanistan and the U.S. military is working with Afghan forces to turn the tide against the insurgents, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee today. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates testified on the fiscal 2011 Defense Budget request. Mullen told the senators that Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan, is the birthplace of the Taliban. Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar ruled Afghanistan from a palace in Kandahar. Today,...

WASHINGTON – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is predicting that it'll be clear by year's end whether a NATO-led counterinsurgency effort in the Afghan Taliban stronghold of Kandahar is successful. Adm. Mike Mullen says the Kandahar campaign, which is planned to go forward next month, is vital to turning around the war. He says the southern Afghanistan city is as important to the overall war effort as Baghdad was to the U.S. troop increase in Iraq in 2007.

WASHINGTON – In the make-or-break struggle for Kandahar, birthplace of Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency, U.S. commanders will try to pull off the military equivalent of brain surgery: defeating the militants with minimal use of force. The goal of U.S.-led NATO forces will be to avoid inspiring support for the Taliban even as the coalition tries to root them out when the Kandahar operation begins in earnest next month. The ancient silk road city — a dust-covered, impoverished jumble of one- and two-story concrete and mud brick — may not look like much of a prize. But Kandahar, with a population of...

The Taliban launched yet another ground attack on a major Coalition military base in Afghanistan. A Taliban force launched a coordinated attack today against Kandahar Airfield, the largest base in southern Afghanistan and a major hub for operations in the south. More than 10,000 Coalition soldiers and contractors are based at the airfield. The attack began at about 8:00 p.m. local time when Taliban fighters moved close to the perimeter and fired mortars and rockets at the sprawling airbase. Three rockets landed inside the base; one struck a helicopter terminal and another a shopping center, Reuters reported. Four people were...

5/4/2010 - Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan -- Members of the 361st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron stood proud during a squadron activation ceremony May 1 on Kandahar Airfield. Col. John A. Cherrey, commander, 451st Expeditionary Operations Group, hosted the ceremony and extended his thanks to the more than 80-member unit. "In 2002, the unit was reactivated again, flying other aircraft. But this is not about the aircraft--it's about you, the members. It is about everything you all contribute--from the maintenance people on the ground to the pilots and commanding officers. You couldn't have a better squadron commander with Colonel Halford." said Colonel Cherrey....

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – The United Nations scaled back its operations in the troubled southern city of Kandahar on Monday, relocating several foreign employees to Kabul and telling more than 200 Afghan U.N. workers to stay home amid rising violence. The announcement came hours after three bombings — one targeting a local police official — shook the city. The rash of attacks came ahead of a joint Afghan-NATO operation to try to wrest control of the area from Taliban militants. The strategy is to flood in troops, rout the militants and rush in new governance, development projects and security to win...

NATO forces will launch a major offensive in the Afghanistan city of Kandahar in June, sources told Fox News, part of a new war strategy that began earlier this year with the offensive in Marjah. The new strategy focuses on clearing Taliban strongholds while protecting the local populations and establishing Afghan control. Part of the objective in Kandahar is to be done with the "clearing phase" of operations by the beginning of August, before Ramadan, two senior U.S. officials told Fox News. The U.S. and its allies already are laying the groundwork for the offensive by removing corrupt politicians from...

The Taliban have called their deadly bomb attacks on the southern city of Kandahar a warning to NATO's top general that the insurgents are ready for the war's next major offensive in their heartland. The series of bombings Saturday night demolished buildings and killed dozens — including 10 people at a wedding — and prompted the provincial governor to plead for more security in the area. Fearful residents said they had no confidence that either government or foreign troops can protect them. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said Sunday that the attacks proved the insurgents were still able to operate...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – The governor of Kandahar province demanded more security around Afghanistan's largest southern city Sunday after a series of explosions killed dozens of people in the Taliban heartland — the target of the war's next major offensive by Afghan and international forces. The blasts, which occurred one after another for 25 minutes across Kandahar city Saturday night, indicate that the insurgents remain a potent force in the area where NATO plans an assault later this year, the follow-up to an operation that has driven militants from a key stronghold in neighboring Helmand province. Residents say Taliban militants can...

Two weeks of bitter fighting in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan is just the prelude to a major offensive this year in neighbouring Kandahar, a senior official in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama said yesterday. U.S. Marines are leading a 15,000-strong force of U.S., Afghan and other NATO forces in an assault on the town of Marjah in what has been billed as the biggest operation since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. "I think the way to look at Marjah, it's the tactical prelude to larger, more comprehensive operations later this year in Kandahar city," said a senior...

With the collapse of the Dutch government this weekend, its 1,600 soldiers are set to be withdrawn from the Taliban-ridden Afghan south shortly before Canada's 2,800 troops leave, creating a dangerous military vacuum there, the Prime Minister warned.

* Even the replacement of the Soviet-backed government and the rise of the Muslim-fundamentalist Taliban didn't quite end the adventures of the Il-76 in Afghanistan. On 3 August 1995, a MiG-19S fighter operated by the Taliban government intercepted an Il-76TD operated by the Russian airline Airstan and forced it to land in Kandahar. Taliban officials were annoyed at Russian backing of anti-Taliban Afghan forces and wanted to use the crew as hostages for the return of Taliban members believed to be held by the Russians. The Russian government negotiated to no effect; a scheme to perform a commando raid to...