U.S. Kills Five Militants in Afghanistan

AP ^ | 03/23/05 | STEPHEN GRAHAM

[nypokerface]

KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. warplanes killed five suspected Taliban or al-Qaida militants near the Pakistani border after guerrillas launched an overnight rocket and gun attack on American and Afghan military positions, officials said Wednesday.

The planes scrambled after insurgents fired at least eight rockets at a U.S. base near the city of Khost, about 90 miles south of Kabul, and turned rockets and guns against three border posts late Tuesday, the American military said.

"Coalition aircraft killed five insurgents," a military statement said, adding that U.S. troops also responded with artillery fire from their base near Khost. No U.S. or allied forces were hurt, it said.

Mohammed Nawab, a senior Afghan commander in Khost, told The Associated Press that U.S. helicopters had ferried ammunition to forces defending the border posts. He blamed Taliban or al-Qaida militants for the attacks and said they came from the Pakistani side of the border.

"They also retreated in that direction," Nawab said by telephone from Khost.

Nawab said his troops found four bodies and abandoned weapons Wednesday morning, though Gov. Nerajuddin Pathan said five bodies were recovered, apparently the same casualties counted by the U.S. military.

Purported Taliban leaders have threatened a fresh offensive as the harsh Afghan winter wanes, though U.S. commanders insist the militants are a fading force.

On Wednesday, NATO's top commander said Afghanistan was stable and that recent attacks were no more than "random acts of violence."

"I don't think we're facing anything that remotely resembles an organized insurgency," U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones, the alliance's supreme operational commander, said at the end of a short visit to the separate, 8,500-strong NATO security force in Afghanistan.

Taliban-led rebels have maintained a stubborn insurgency along the mountainous border, despite the presence of some 17,000 American troops in Afghanistan more than three years after the former ruling militia was ousted for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

In eastern Afghanistan, U.S.-led troops accidentally shot to death an Afghan boy during a search operation, the military said. The boy was killed when troops from the American-led coalition opened fire as they pursued a suspected bomb-maker in a village near Asadabad, 120 miles east of Kabul, the military said in a statement.

"The boy, who village elders said was a transient, was killed during the fire," the statement said.

The boy appeared to be between 10 and 14 years old, the military said,

Afghan leaders have complained repeatedly of heavy-handed U.S. search operations, while U.N. officials and human rights groups say the death of civilians in a string of accidents plays into the rebels' hands.

In another incident, a roadside bomb damaged a U.S. Humvee near the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday, U.S. spokeswoman Lt. Cindy Moore said. The soldiers on board were unhurt.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy reminded Americans they may be targeted for attacks ranging from suicide bombings to kidnappings and said it had put a Kabul restaurant popular with foreigners off limits to its staff.

Investigators suspect that a Scottish consultant to the Afghan government who was shot to death March 7 had been followed from the restaurant by unidentified assassins.

[river rat]

Sooner or later, we're going to have to give up the practice of trying to describe the lunatic bastards over there as being a member of this lunatic group or that lunatic group...

Why not simply report, that some lunatic bastards fired at us or our friends -- and we killed the bastards....

No need to be any more specific than that.....

Kill em, and move on...there's a lot of killing needed to clean up the place.

Semper Fi

[SunkenCiv]

For one thing, the border needs to be cleared of reporters.

For another, after a hit like this, the carcasses need to be beheaded, and the heads stuck on poles to decorate the Afghan border. The rest of the carcasses buried with pig parts (or said to be, it's just as good) -- their stupid brain-dead superstition, not ours.