Thirteen killed in Afghan violence

KABUL: At least 13 people, including five Afghan border police, a Nato soldier and two would-be suicide bombers were killed across Afghanistan Saturday, officials said. The border guards died when their vehicle was ambushed in Gulran district of Hirat province in western Afghanistan, General Sulaiman, the commander of rapid reaction forces in the area, told AFP. “The vehicle first hit a roadside bomb and then the militants opened fire using grenade launchers and small arms,” he said. The Nato soldier died in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force said, without providing any further details. Also on Saturday, a roadside bomb hit a civilian truck in Lashkar Gah, the capital...

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Blast kills 11 on bus in Syria, clashes elsewhere

BEIRUT: An explosion killed at least 11 people on a minibus carrying prisoners in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib on Saturday, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. The British-based group, which monitors a 10-month-old uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, gave no further details. No independent confirmation was available. In other violence, heavy fighting broke out between the Syrian army and soldiers who have defected to join anti-Assad insurgents in an area near the border with Turkey, Al Jazeera television reported. It gave no further details of the clashes which it said were in the city of Jisr al-Shughou...

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Maoist landmine attack kills 12 policemen in India

PATNA, India: A landmine attack by Maoist militants in eastern India killed at least 12 policemen and injured three others, authorities said on Saturday. The attack, targeting a police vehicle in Jharkhand state, was to protest against the killing of one of the top Maoist leaders Koteswar Rao — better known as Kishenji — by security forces last year, police said. “The Maoists triggered a powerful landmine targeting the police vehicle in Garhwa district,” senior police official Suman Gupta told AFP by telephone from state capital Ranchi. The policemen were apparently trapped by the Maoists in a forested area of the district, Gupta added. The Maoist insurgency, which began in 1967, feeds off land disputes, police brutality...

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Grossman in Kabul for talks with Karzai on peace

KABUL: US envoy Marc Grossman arrived in Kabul Saturday for talks with President Hamid Karzai on preliminary peace negotiations with Taliban insurgents. “The United States stands ready to assist in any way we can an Afghan-led reconciliation process to find a peaceful end to this conflict,” he said in a statement. “I look forward to calling on President Karzai and discussing next steps.” Grossman’s visit comes in the wake of an announcement by the Taliban that it planned to open a political office in Qatar ahead of talks with Washington on ending Afghanistan’s 10-year war. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton despatched Grossman to Kabul to discuss the development with Karzai, who was reportedly concerned that he would...

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