Friday, December 2, 2011

Eight killed in Iraq attacks

6:35 AM McGhori

BAGHDAD: Bomb and gun attacks in Iraq have killed eight people, including four anti-Qaeda militiamen, and wounded 12 others, security officials said on Friday. “Four people were killed and seven wounded in two attacks by roadside bombs in the Taji area,” just north of Baghdad, an interior ministry official said. The first attack targeted the home of Nadhem Karim Mohammed, a leader of anti-Qaeda Sahwa militia forces in Taji, killing him and his mother about 7:00 am, the official said. When police arrived at the scene, another bomb went off, killing two police and wounding seven others. Unknown gunmen attacked a Sahwa checkpoint in the Al-Sharqat area, 120 kilometres (75 miles) northeast of Tikrit, killing three Sahwa...
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Karzai to visit Britain next week: officials

6:33 AM McGhori

KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai will visit Britain next week to sign a strategic partnership deal with London following a conference on Afghanistan’s future in Germany, his office said Friday. Karzai will meet British Prime Minister David Cameron and heir to the throne Prince Charles during the two-day visit Tuesday and Wednesday, officials added. The strategic partnership agreement between Britain and Afghanistan will govern political and diplomatic relations between the two countries after 2014, by which time all foreign combat troops are due to leave. Last month, a loya jirga or traditional meeting of Afghan elders endorsed a strategic partnership deal with the United States – with a string of conditions including...
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US military hands Camp Victory over to Iraqis

2:03 AM McGhori

CAMP VICTORY: The US military says it has handed over Camp Victory, a sprawling base at the edge of Baghdad that used to be the headquarters for the US military, to the Iraqi government. US military spokesman Col. Barry Johnson says Victory Base Complex – as it’s formally called by the US military – was formally signed over on Friday morning and is now under the ”full authority” of the Iraqi government. Camp Victory has served as the headquarters for the US military and home to the military’s commanding general. Some parts of the compound are already being used by the Iraqi military, but the government is still deciding what to do with the prime real estate like the palaces used by the US militar...
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Suicide blast injures up to 70 near Afghan Nato base

1:50 AM McGhori

PUL-I-ALAM, Afghanistan: A powerful suicide truck bomb exploded near the entrance to a Nato base on Friday, injuring as many as 70 people, mainly civilians, south of the Afghan capital Kabul, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Muhammad Agha district of Logar province which took place at around 8:00am Friday. The blast could be heard for several kilometres, an AFP reporter in the area said. Logar’s health director, Mohammad Zarif Nayebkhail, told AFP that up to 70 people were taken to hospital with injuries from shrapnel or flying glass. “Up to 70 wounded have been taken to the main hospital in the district – seven of them are (Afghan) security guards of Nato, the rest are civilians,”...
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Pakistan gave OK to deadly Nato air strike: WSJ

1:50 AM McGhori

Pakistani officials gave the go-ahead to a Nato air strike that killed 24 Pakistani troops, unaware that their own forces were in the area, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday quoting US officials. Last weekend’s cross-border attack has caused public outrage in Pakistan, where the government has pulled out of next week’s international conference on Afghanistan and threatened to end support for the US-led war there if its sovereignty is violated again. The US officials, giving their first detailed explanation of the worst friendly-fire incident of the 10-year-old war, said an Afghan-led assault force that included US commandos was hunting Taliban militants when it came under fire from an encampment along the...
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UN: Syria now in a civil war with 4,000 dead

1:43 AM McGhori

BEIRUT: Syria has entered a state of civil war with more than 4,000 people dead and an increasing number of soldiers defecting from the army to fight President Bashar Assad’s regime, the UN’s top human rights official has said. Civil war has been the worst-case scenario in Syria since the revolt against Assad began eight months ago. Damascus has a web of allegiances that extends to Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement and Iran’s Shiite theocracy, raising fears of a regional conflagration. The assessment on Thursday that the bloodshed in Syria has crossed into civil war came from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. The conflict has shown little sign of letting up. Activists reported up to 22 people killed...
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