Friday, January 20, 2012

France suspends Afghan training, mulls withdrawal: Sarkozy

3:23 AM McGhori

PARIS: France on Friday suspended all training and joint operations in Afghanistan after an Afghan soldier shot dead four of its troops, and President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was mulling an early withdrawal. “The French army is alongside its allies but we cannot accept that a single one of our soldiers be wounded or killed by our allies, it’s unacceptable,” Sarkozy said, dispatching Defence Minister Gerard Longuet to Afghanistan. Longuet and army chief of staff Admiral Edouard Guillaud will establish the circumstances of Friday’s shooting in which an Afghan soldier shot dead four French troops and wounded 16 before being arrested. “Between now and then all training, joint combat operations by the French army are suspended,”...
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Senior al Qaeda figure killed in drone strike

2:53 AM McGhori

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD: A militant who acted as a senior operations organizer for al Qaeda was targeted and killed in one of two US drone strikes launched against targets inside Pakistan last week, a US official said. US and Pakistani sources told Reuters that the target of the attack was Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national from Abbottabad, the same town where Osama bin Laden was killed last May by a US commando team. They said he was targeted in a strike by a US-operated drone on January 10 directed at what news reports said was a compound near the town of Miranshah in the border province of North Waziristan. That strike broke an undeclared eight-week hiatus in attacks by the armed, unmanned drones that patrol Pakistan’s tribal areas...
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Arab League considers extension of Syria mission

2:44 AM McGhori

BEIRUT: Syrian government tanks and armored vehicles have pulled back from an embattled mountain town near Damascus, activists and witnesses say, but at least 16 people have been killed by security forces elsewhere as a month long Arab League fact-finding mission expires. The pullback from Zabadani left the town under the control of the opposition, activists said on Thursday. The besieged town of Zabadani has witnessed heavy exchanges of fire between army troops and anti-government military defectors over the past six days. The 10-month uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad has turned increasingly militarised and chaotic as more frustrated regime opponents and army defectors arm themselves and fight back against government...
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Six US personnel dead in Afghanistan chopper crash

2:41 AM McGhori

WASHINGTON: Six US service personnel were killed in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, officials said, indicating the incident was not believed to be the result of enemy fire. The helicopter, a CH-53 Sea Stallion, went down in the volatile Helmand province, according to one US official who said: “Initial indications are that this was not hostile fire.” The dead were members of the US military, another US official told AFP. In a brief statement, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said the cause of the crash was “under investigation”. “However, initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the crash,” it said. The Sea Stallion is a heavy transport...
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