Man in Afghan army uniform kills two Nato troops: ISAF

KABUL: A man wearing an Afghan army uniform on Thursday shot dead two members of Nato’s US-led International Security Assistance Force, military officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which they said targeted French troops in Kapisa province, which is east of the capital Kabul. “An individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform turned his weapon against two International Security Assistance Forces service members in eastern Afghanistan, today, killing both service members,” a coalition statement said. ISAF said it was investigating but did not identify the nationality of the victims in line with policy. “This morning one Afghan soldier named Ebrahim killed three French soldiers. He was also...

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Taliban attack kills 10 Afghan police

KANDAHAR: A Taliban bomb attack killed 10 Afghan police returning from a recruitment centre in southern Afghanistan’s restive Helmand province on Thursday, the local government said. The victims were members of the US-funded Afghan Local Police (ALP) set up last year and touted as key to a handover of security control, which will see all foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan in theory by the end of 2014. “Ten local police were killed and one was injured after their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the Nad-e Ali district of Helmand province,” provincial governor’s spokesman Daud Ahmadi said. “The police were on their way back from a recruitment centre.” Three of the ALP officers were newly recruited, he added. The Taliban,...

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Turkish air strikes kill 23 Kurds near Iraq: official

DIYARBAKIR: Turkish air strikes killed 23 Kurdish villagers in the southeast near the Iraqi border early Thursday, an official of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said. Provincial officials found 23 bodies at Ortasu village in Sirnak province, councillor Ertan Eris told pro-Kurdish Roj TV from the bombing site. Nineteen of those killed had so far been identified. Eris said the dead were among a group of 35 to 40 people, their ages ranging from 16 to 20, who had crossed the border to smuggle goods. Local security sources said the group was smuggling gas and sugar into Turkey from northern Iraq and may have been mistaken for Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels. The PKK, which took up arms in Kurdish-majority...

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Police shoot seven ‘terrorists’ in China’s Muslim west

BEIJING: Police in China’s restive Central Asia border area fatally shot seven members of a Muslim ethnic group in what officials said Thursday was an attempt to end a kidnapping by terrorists, but what a rights group said was excessive force. Accounts from officials and government websites said police officers opened fire after they encountered resistance in a Wednesday night raid on a mountain hideout outside Hotan city to free two men kidnapped by ”a violent terrorist group.” Aside from the seven dead, four people were injured and another four arrested, and while police freed the two hostages, one officer was killed and another injured, said an account on the official website of Xinjiang, the region where the incident took...

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Arab observers visit more Syrian protest hubs

DAMASCUS: Arab monitors headed to more Syrian protest hubs on Thursday after the flashpoint city of Homs as world powers warned Damascus not to hinder their mission to reveal the truth about the crackdown on dissent. More bloodshed was reported as army defectors killed at least four soldiers in the southern province of Daraa, two civilians were shot dead in Homs’ Baba Amro quarter, another in Hama and one during protests in Aleppo province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday. Also reported were arrests and gunshot wounds in Idlib province and more shooting injuries, with three suspected fatalities, in a village near Damascus. Accusations that the regime was trying to hide the facts from the monitors...

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