War News for Friday, April 16, 2010

NATO is reporting the deaths of four ISAF soldiers in an insurgent attack in an undisclosed area of northern Afghanistan on Thursday, April 15th. Various news reports that four German soldiers died in an IED and or small arms fire/rocket attack on their patrol in the Baghlan region, about 100 kilometers south of the German base in Kunduz province. Two Afghan soldiers were also killed in the attack and five additional German soldiers were wounded


Free speech behind armoured doors in Iraq:


Reported security incidents

Baghdad:
#1: Armed men blew up a 50 m high phone-net tower that belongs to Asiacell company in Abu Ghraib district, Thursday.

#2: Gunmen in a speeding car fired on an Iraqi army checkpoint in western Baghdad, wounding one soldier. Soldiers returned fire, killing three alleged attackers, the spokesman for the Baghdad security operations centre said.


Diyala Prv:
#1: Six Peshmerga forces were wounded on Friday in a bomb blast in north of Baaquba, a police source said. “An improvised explosive device went off targeting a Peshmerga patrol at a checkpoint between al-Saadiya and Jalawlaa districts, injuring six personnel, including an officer,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.


Abu Ghraib:
#1: A suicide car bomb driven by a suicide bomber targeted an Army checkpoint in Abu Ghraib district, Tuesday, killing two soldiers and injuring 15 others. The whole district has been besieged by security forces since the explosions that followed the elections.


Samarra:
#1: Policemen on Thursday found 14 decayed bodies in a mass grave to the west of Samarra, a media police source said. “Emergency police forces found on Thursday afternoon (April 15) a mass grave with 14 decayed bodies, in Shannana region in west of Samarra,” Colonel Hatem Akram told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The victims were shot and most of them wearing civilian clothes,” he added.


Kirkuk:
#1: Unknown rocket landed on a residential area late Thursday in western Kirkuk, a source from the joint coordination center said on Friday. “The rocket was launched from the old recruitment area in central Kirkuk and landed in Dour al-Faylaq region near the sixth gate in western Kirkuk, without causing damage,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.


Hawija:
#1: Multinational forces defused an explosive charge in southwest of Kirkuk late Thursday, according to a source from the joint coordination center. “Police forces found late Thursday (April 15) a bomb in al-Huweija district, 65 km southwest of Kirkuk,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.


Mosul:
#1: Unidentified gunmen on Thursday shot dead four members of the same family inside their own house in central Mosul city, according to a police source in Ninewa. “The gunmen opened fire on people inside their house in the area of Bab al-Bayd, central Mosul, killing a man and three women,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

#2: Armed men attacked a checkpoint in 17 July neighbourhood, west Mosul, Thursday, killing two soldiers.


Al Anbar Prv:
#1: A roadside bomb targeted police patrol in Gattana neighbourhood, central Ramadi, at 9 a.m. Thursday, injuring all six policemen inside the vehicle, three of whom are critical.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: The United Nations said five of its Afghan employees were missing Friday amid reports their vehicles were hijacked in the same northern province where fierce fighting killed four German soldiers and three Afghan police the previous day. Word of the U.N. workers' disappearance in Baghlan province. A Baghlan police official said the U.N. employees had been kidnapped by Taliban insurgents. Dan McNorton, a spokesman for the world body in Kabul, said only that the five Afghans, who worked for the U.N. Office for Project Services, were missing.

#2: A suicide bomber attacked a hospital emergency room where Shiite Muslims were mourning a slain bank manager on Friday, killing eight people including a journalist and two policemen in Pakistan's main southwestern city, police said. Gunshots rang out after the explosion at the Civil Hospital, and rescuers carried away the dead and wounded, TV footage showed.Among the dead was a cameraman working for Pakistan's Samaa TV, said Saifuddin Khan, a hospital official. Two policemen also died, while 35 people were wounded in the apparent "sectarian attack," said Qazi Abdul Wahid, a senior police investigator.

#3: A suspected U.S. missile strike, meanwhile, killed four alleged militants in the country's northwestern tribal belt, officials said. The alleged missile strike took place in the Toorkhel area in North Waziristan, a tribal region filled with al-Qaida and Taliban fighters focused on attacking U.S. and NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan. At least four suspected militants were killed, said Noor Ahmad, a government official, and two intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

#4-5: the dual bombings in the southern city of Kandahar that killed at least three people. Thursday's attacks on a hotel and compound housing foreign companies showed how vulnerable targets remain in the city where NATO forces are gearing up for a major operation to drive out the Taliban. The death toll from the latest attacks remained unclear. Karzai initially reported three foreigners and three Afghans were killed in the more powerful of the two explosions that occurred after sundown when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle at the inner security barrier of a compound shared by several Western companies.

No foreigners are believed to have died in a suicide bombing that struck a compound of foreign staff in southern Afghanistan, despite initial reports that Westerners were among the dead, the U.S. embassy said on Friday. “No foreigners were killed that I’m aware of,” U.S. embassy spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. She said at least two Americans were among the wounded in the attack in Kandahar on Thursday. Britain has said at least one British civilian was also hurt. Western officials say the nationalities of all the casualties have yet to be determined.
The governor of Kandahar, Tooryalai Wesa, said three Afghans were killed in the strike and 26 people, including foreigners and Afghans, were wounded. Earlier, Afghan officials had said foreign security contractors were also killed. The head of the Kandahar provincial council, Ahmad Wali Karzai, said initial reports were that three foreigners had died in the attack, one of two bombing in Kandahar that night.

#4: A car bomb exploded in central Kandahar Thursday, wounding at least six people in the latest in a spate of attacks on the Taliban stronghold that has been earmarked as the focus of a forthcoming offensive by NATO and Afghan forces. A car bomb explosion wounded at least six people in central Kandahar on Thursday, police said, the latest in a string of attacks in the volatile southern Afghan city.

#5: Earlier Thursday, a remotely detonated car bomb went off in front of the Noor Jehan Hotel, which includes the offices of several foreign news organizations, wounding eight people and shattering windows in the four-story building.

#6: Pakistani security forces Friday killed 17 more militants in the ongoing campaign against miscreants in Orakzai tribal region, the northwest of Pakistan, local sources said. The troops advanced to Sanghar area of central Orakzai region and attacked the hideouts of militants to clear the area, killing 17 militants and arrested several others.