Posted on 03/05/2005 5:06:15 PM PST by nwctwx
Edited on 03/29/2005 8:49:43 PM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]
U.S. Citizens Warned as Afghan Kidnapping Foiled
by Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL:- The United States has warned its nationals in Afghanistan about dangers including suicide attacks, hijacking and assassination and urged them to keep a low profile.
The warning came at the weekend, hours before an American man escaped a kidnapping attempt on Sunday in Kabul's upmarket Wazir Akbar Khan district, which is home to many foreign residents.
"The U.S. embassy in Kabul reminds American citizens living and traveling in Afghanistan that potential remains for attacks against U.S. citizens and interests in Afghanistan," the U.S. embassy in Kabul said.
Dangers included rocket attacks, suicide operations, assassinations, hijackings, shootings and bombings, said an announcement, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.
U.S. citizens were told to maintain a high level of vigilance, to increase their security awareness and to restrict their movements.
The embassy has issued similar warnings in the past.
The latest comes after a series of Taliban guerrilla raids in southern and eastern parts of the country and worry over rising crime in the capital.
On Sunday, an American escaped kidnappers who bundled him into the boot of a car in broad daylight in Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan area, where several countries have embassies and where many foreigners have homes and offices.
A Western security source said the man, who he did not identify, escaped by using a spanner to open the boot of the vehicle.
The embassy gave no details of the incident but warned Americans to avoid places where foreigners congregate, such as restaurants, markets and internet cafes, as well as places such as government buildings and military facilities.
Last month, a British adviser to the government was shot dead near a U.N. guest house. A road-side bomb hurt several people including one Filipino in Kabul several weeks ago.
In October, members of a Taliban splinter faction seized three foreigners helping organize a presidential election and held them for nearly a month before releasing them.
The same month, an American woman and an Afghan girl were killed in a suicide bombing on a Kabul shopping street.
The Taliban, ousted in 2001 by U.S.-led forces for sheltering al Qaeda and its chief Osama bin Laden, the architect of Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. cities, have taken responsibility for most of the attacks.
http://www.sabawoon.com/news/miniheadlines.asp?dismode=article&artid=22062
Depends. If you're speaking of any normal strain of plague or smallpox, you'd probably be correct. But a true bio-attack would involve strains that are in fact weaponized and that is something else altogether!
Back around 1989 I knew someone who was traveling quite a bit in Russia. I know, NZ is a far cry from Russia, but, he said on quite a few of the flights of smaller Russian commuter airlines, the doors were held shut with bailing wire. Yikes.
PRAYER REQUEST on the following thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1380134/posts?page=409#409
>>>commuter airlines, the doors were held shut with bailing wire
Yup. This is why I'm glad I'm a law abiding citizen. I would never break the laws 'of gravity' ;)
Oh no. I just caught up on the thread and read the latest news. Prayers to TC.
,,, I think flights are chartered from time to time if her schedule doesn't tie in with regular air carriers or if an Air Force plane is unavailable. I suspect this particular flight may have been a small NZ Air Force plane for city hopping.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted on Tuesday, April 12, a resolution calling for combating defamation campaigns against Islam and Muslims in the West.
The measure, put forward by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), was voted for by 31 countries and 16 against, with five abstentions and one delegation absent, Reuters reported.
“There was a growing trend of defamation of Islam and discrimination faced by Muslims and the people of Arab descent in many parts of the world,” Pakistan's UN envoy, Masood Khan, said in a speech.
Excerpted
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2005/04/13/3702.shtml
KABUL (Agencies): US troops and warplanes reinforced Afghan forces that were ambushed on a high mountain pass in a firefight that killed about 12 fighters and wounded two American soldiers, officials said Tuesday.
In other reminders of Afghanistan’s instability, farmers fought a gunbattle with counternarcotics police in the south, and authorities said they arrested three men suspected of trying to abduct an American in the capital.
US forces scrambled to the aid of a convoy of government troops who came under fire Monday from 30-35 fighters on a mountain pass near Khost, 90 miles south of Kabul, American and Afghan officials said.
“The insurgents were reported to be fleeing the area but the coalition forces were able to locate them,” a US military statement said. “Approximately a dozen insurgents were killed.”
Troops found a bomb rigged to one corpse, it said. The two injured Americans were airlifted to the main US base at Bagram for treatment and were listed in stable condition.
Police blamed Taliban rebels for the attack and suggested Afghan Gen. Khial Baz, a former senior military commander traveling in the convoy, was their target. None of the Afghans were reported hurt.
Khost is a former stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters close to the Pakistani frontier and sees regular skirmishes between fighters and Afghan and US forces. It also is riven by violent factional and tribal disputes. Baz, who survived several earlier attacks, commanded a provincial militia which worked closely with US troops until it disbanded earlier this year under a disarmament program. He has survived several attacks.
Afghanistan’s unruly militias are being replaced by new foreign-trained forces, including the Afghan National Army, now 20,000-strong, and special forces to rein in its runaway narcotics industry.
Tuesday’s gunbattle broke out when protesters prevented members of a US-trained unit from beginning a campaign to destroy opium poppy crops in southern Kandahar province, leaving one person dead and seven wounded. Hundreds of protesters set fire to car tires and blocked a main road near Maywand, 50 miles from Kandahar city, deputy police chief Salim Khan said.
“The poppy eradication team came under fire from several directions,” Khan said. “They fired back and six people were injured and one killed. One of the team was also injured.”
He said the operation was suspended, and officials were negotiating with the leaders of the protest. President Hamid Karzai last year proclaimed a “holy war” on Afghanistan’s drug industry, which has become the world’s largest since US forces ousted the hard-line Taliban government in 2001.
In 2004, the country produced 87 percent of the world’s opium, the raw material for heroin, prompting warnings it was turning into a “narco-state,” although preliminary surveys suggest cultivation is down this year. Donors including the United States, Britain and the European Union are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to train special Afghan forces to destroy crops, smash laboratories and arrest traffickers. More funds are going to help farmers switch to legal crops.
Meanwhile, an official said police in the capital have arrested three men suspected of trying to kidnap an American civilian two days earlier. The men fit descriptions of the suspects in Sunday’s attack and appeared to be planning another abduction or robbery when they were apprehended, Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal said.
Three men forced the American into the trunk of their car after he had walked up a hill overlooking the city. The victim escaped by opening the trunk with a tire wrench and throwing himself from the vehicle as it sped toward Kabul airport.
Three arrested as kidnapping bid foiled KABUL (APP): Afghan police have arrested three armed suspects linked to the attempted abduction of an American in Kabul as they allegedly planned a similar attack, an official said Tuesday.
The suspects were seized on Monday, near a hill overlooking Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan diplomatic quarter where three attackers forced a young American into a car on Sunday, Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said.
“Police arrested three men armed with AK-47s, hand grenades, pistols and fake licence plates in a Toyota four-wheel vehicle as they were preparing for another kidnapping attack on Monday,” Mashal told THIS NEWS AGENCY.
Two wore military fatigues and the third wore Afghan traditional clothes. Police believe they were behind the failed kidnapping bid on Sunday.
“They have not confessed but we think they were behind the Sunday kidnapping attempt,” Mashal added. The US citizen narrowly escaped after being bundled into the back of a car Sunday, prising his way out of the trunk of the moving car and then calling on locals for help.
“The abduction of a US citizen in Kabul on April 10 demonstrates the potential remains great for attacks against US citizens,” American consul in Kabul Russel Brown wrote in an open letter circulating among the foreign community.
Around 700 US citizens are registered with the US embassy in Afghanistan. However, diplomats estimate that there are over 2,000 private US citizens in the country. Foreigners in Kabul have been on alert following a series of incidents that have raised fears of a wave of Iraq-style kidnappings and killings.
A British development worker was gunned down last month as he drove through downtown Kabul. Three UN workers were abducted in the capital last October before being released unharmed almost a month later.
But I don't see how we would be more vulnerable to weaponized strains. Granted the mortality rate would be greater. A bad bug would affect us but third world countries could be devasted because they don't have early warning systems or resources to combat the threat.
Take, for example, smallpox. How could we be hit worse than Iraq? Somalia? Oman?
Re 4044
Thanks for posting that Cindy. TexasCowboy needs our prayers.
Yep.
I guess I'll just stay home this summer and swat my own brand of bugs here.
Yep.
Very, very sad.
Prayers continue.
Weaponized strains cut two ways: They are more virulent and they are more resistant to antidotes. And frankly, I don't much care about Somalia or Oman. When I was in the US Army's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare school in the 1980's they barely touched on the topic of biologicals at all. Know why? They said it was a weapon for terrorism and not the battlefield.
As far as the Tango's are concerned, it's okay to wipe away the entire Arab world (it is, after all the will of Allah) as long as they can be sure to kill all of the infidels, too. They'll eat lamb in paradise with our virgins to service them for eternity. Such a deal!
have a variety of jihad type and Islamic Media photos?
http://readcgi.s7.xrea.com/404/367.jpg
http://readcgi.s7.xrea.com/404/368.jpg
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