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KABUL, Afghanistan — KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A driver for the Spanish police contingent in Afghanistan opened fire during a training exercise Wednesday, killing two Spanish officers and their interpreter in what appeared to be the latest in a series of attacks by infiltrators linked to the insurgency, officials said. The assailant was shot and killed by Spanish officers who had been conducting a police training course at their base in Badghis province, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said. "I can't say if the Taliban were behind this or not. But what is clear is that it was a...

Corporal Cristo Ancor Cabello Santana Madrid, Spain, Oct 14, 2009 / 04:35 pm (CNA).- Corporal Cristo Ancor Cabello Santana, the lastest Spanish soldier to die in Afghanistan, fulfilled his wish to be baptized before dying. Cabello had asked the chaplain at the Herat Base to baptize him and was planning on receiving the sacrament last weekend before being wounded in a Taliban attack. The chaplain wanted to use a baptismal shell being sent from Madrid to administer the sacrament, but Cabello told him he already had one from when he made a pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain. The chaplain used...

Barcepundit catches Joe Biden in Spain doing … well, what Joe Biden does best. Joe Biden remembered to thank Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero for all the help he gave us in Iraq, except that the only thing Zapatero gave us in Iraq was the finger:

Barcepundit catches Joe Biden in Spain doing … well, what Joe Biden does best. Joe Biden remembered to thank Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero for all the help he gave us in Iraq, except that the only thing Zapatero gave us in Iraq was the finger:

The United States is issuing unusually strong criticism of NATO ally Spain by expressing surprise at its decision to pull out its troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. State Department spokesman Robert Wood says the United States was "deeply disappointed" by the decision. He says Washington only learned of the move shortly before Spain announced it publicly. Defense Minister Carme Chacon made the announcement Thursday, saying, "The mission has been completed and it is time to return home." Asked if the United States shared that assessment, Wood said, "Not at all."

MADRID, Spain - Spain's Socialist prime minister won re-election Sunday, as voters dismissed worries about a slumping economy, immigration and resurgent Basque militants to hand him a second term. ADVERTISEMENT The results were a clear endorsement of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's record, which includes reforms such as legalizing gay marriage and granting on-demand divorce, once thought unthinkable in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country. Zapatero also withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq and launched a drive to cede more power to Spain's semiautonomous regions. "The Spanish people have spoken clearly and decided to start a new era," Zapatero told euphoric...

Hezbolla Condemns the Attack as "Intended to Destabilize the Area" Beirut - Six soldiers from the Spanish army deployed in Lebanon as "blue helmets" have died and another two are wounded after an attack against their convoy in the south of the country, according to official sources at the Spanish Ministry of Defence. These are the first Spanish deaths as part of the peace mission deployed by the United Nations in Lebanon. No group has admitted responsibility for the attack yet... [Spanish president] Rodríguez Zapatero spoke with the general of the International Brigade, Ramón Martín Ambrosio, to tell him he...

BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 24 — A car bombing killed five United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Sunday, opening another potentially disastrous fault line in a country held hostage to violence and political deadlock. No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the peacekeepers, who were deployed along the border with Israel after last summer’s war with Hezbollah. But suspicion immediately fell on militant Islamists, who are fighting the Lebanese Army in the country’s north. The United Nations force, Unifil, has been on alert for weeks because of that fight and several bombings that are believed to be related to...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A bomb apparently targeting U.N. peacekeepers exploded by the side of a road in southern Lebanon on Sunday, killing four Spanish troops and injuring at least four, a senior Lebanese security official said. The senior official in Beirut said a mine may have caused the explosion, but another security official based in southern Lebanon said a bomb detonated at the side of a road about four miles north of the Israeli border town of Metulla. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

MADRID, Spain (AP) - The Spanish government agreed Friday to contribute up to 1,100 troops to the strengthened U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon and lead one of its multinational brigades. The decision, made at a weekly Cabinet meeting, is expected to be approved by the parliament in a Thursday vote. Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said that, assuming the mission is approved, Spain will immediately send marines to Lebanon. They will be replaced in November by other Spanish troops, who will take command of a multinational brigade, she said. Defense Minister Jose Antonio Alonso is to...

The former US governor of Iraq has condemned Spanish troops for their 'idiotic' conduct in Iraq. Paul Bremer claimed they "did nothing" as a battle between Shi'ite militia forces and coalition troops went on around them in the Iraqi city of Najaf in 2004. In his memoirs, Bremer wrote: "They are sitting in tanks doing nothing", quoting from notes he made at the time. "It is a perfect outrage – I call it the 'coalition of the not-at-all- willing'."

After Spain withdrew its 1,300 troops from Iraq in April of 2004, newly elected Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero urged all coalition governments to follow suit. No sooner would Spanish forces abandon Iraq, Zapatero confidently announced, than the imperiled country would “recover its freedom, stability and sovereignty as soon as possible.” Fortunately for Iraqis, Zapatero’s advice went largely unheeded. Indeed, the prime minister could not have gotten it more wrong. According to a recently published report in the Spanish magazine Interviú, the situation in Diwaniya and Najaf, where Spanish bases were located and which formerly enjoyed relative calm,...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11, 2005 – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice thanked U.S., French and Spanish troops in Kyrgyzstan today for their role in helping to safeguard fledgling democracies and supporting the war on terror. "We have strong allies in this fight. It is not an American fight, but rather, a fight of free peoples," she told the troops at Manas Air Base, according to a 376th Air Expeditionary Wing news release. The base serves as a staging point for operations in Afghanistan and is currently hosting relief and supply efforts for earthquake relief efforts in Pakistan. "I want to thank...

This is just in CNN reported that 17 spanish troops killed in afghanistan will keep you posted

MADRID, June 21 (Xinhuanet) -- The Spanish government plans to send a new contingent of 500 troops to Afghanistan to reinforce security in the country's September parliamentary elections, Defense Minister Jose Bono said Tuesday. Bono told reporters that he will request Congress on Wednesday to assess the possibility of sending more troops. Spain has already deployed 540 soldiers in Afghanistan. As part of the NATO troops in the Asian country, the Spanish forces are in Herat and Qala-i-Naw, both in western Afghanistan. In regard to the personal differences between Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and US President George...

The families were glad to have their soldier sons safely home from Iraq—but the soldiers themselves were angry. "We should have stayed and finished our mission," one sergeant told a reporter. One of his buddies agreed. "When you see the poverty and people living in mud houses next to Saddam's palaces, the work we were doing seems justified," he explained. "It had valor."These amazing comments came, not from American servicemen returning home, but from Spanish soldiers—men who had been brought home by their new prime minister, Zapatero. While some of these men were initially opposed to the war, they...

A Spanish radio journalist is being held in the Iraqi city of Najaf by a Shiite group linked to rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, state radio reported on Friday. Spanish National Radio said its correspondent Fran Sevilla, who reported the Spanish troops' withdrawal from their base at Diwaniya earlier on Friday, was unharmed but his telephone was about to be confiscated. "He was intercepted by a group of militants of the Shiite leader al-Sadr. He phoned to say where he was, in a mosque in Najaf, and that they were going to take away his phone," state radio editor Javier Arenas...

Spanish Troops Come Under Attack In Iraq (Madrid) -- At least one Spanish soldier has been hurt in an attack on a Spanish convoy as it was in the process of pulling out of war-ravaged Iraq. Spain's Defense Ministry Office reports that the convoy was ambushed by Iraqi insurgents on its way to Kuwait. One insurgent was killed and another injured in the incident. The Spanish soldiers were among the last still in Iraq, with the withdrawal of all the country's troops expected to be finished within the next week.

In the old military city of Badajoz the sound of drums and trumpets that welcomed Spanish troops home from Iraq had given way yesterday to a discontented silence among men who feel they have let down their allies. Senior army officers are guarded in their response to the decision of the socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to withdraw soldiers from Iraq. But as a small contingent of Spanish troops prepares to remove the last vestiges of the country's 1,300-strong presence, there are whisperings of discontent from those now returned. The previous prime minister, José María Aznar, contrary to...

BADAJOZ, Spain -- For centuries, Spanish conquerors have been coming home to this rugged, remote terrain near the border with Portugal. The gray stone castles and the towering cathedrals that dot the rocky countryside were built 500 years ago by native conquistadors returning triumphantly from the New World after plundering its riches. Last week, Spanish soldiers hastily withdrawn from service in Iraq by the newly elected government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero returned to the sprawling military base here and a welcome-home ceremony. A sign at the base entrance read, "Todo por la patria," or "All for the...