War News for Thursday, July 07, 2011

Reported security incidents

Baghdad:
#1: Two American soldiers have been injured and their vehicle damaged in a sticky bomb blast that targeted their Army patrol west of Baghdad on Wednesday, a Baghdad police source reported. “An explosive charge blew up on Wednesday afternoon in west Iraq’s al-Nisour Square against a U.S. Army patrol, wounding 2 American soldiers and damaging their Hummer vehicles,” the police source said, giving no further details.


Diyala Prv:
#1: Two policemen were killed and 19 people wounded, including four police officers, in a suicide car bomb attack targeted a convoy of a police commando chief in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a provincial police source told Xinhua on Thursday. The attack occurred on Wednesday night when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into the convoy of police vehicles carrying Lieutenant Colonel Abdul-Hameed, chief of the 3rd Battalion of Diyala's police commando, while moving in al-Hadeed area, northwest of the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, the source from Diyala's operations command said on condition of anonymity. The blast killed two police commandoes and wounded four officers, including Hameed, and ten commandoes, the source said, adding that five passers-by were also wounded by the blast.

#2: Separately a roadside bomb went off on Thursday morning near a butcher shop and wounded the shop owner and two civilians in al-Gatoon area, some six km west of Baquba, the source added.




Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: update - A Il-76 cargo plane of the Azeri company Silk Way crashed into a mountain in eastern Afghanistan. Presumably the plane was attacked by the militants of the Taliban movement, Azerbaijan’s ambassador in Afghanistan Dashgyn Shikarov said on Thursday. He rejected the earlier version that the crash was caused by technical failure or inexperienced crew. All nine people on board were killed. Five of them were Azeri citizens.

#2: A NATO helicopter crashed Thursday in eastern Afghanistan but no one was hurt, the U.S.-led coalition said. The crew was recovered after the crash, which occurred in Parwan province. NATO said the cause of the incident was under investigation. The Taliban claimed its fighters shot down the aircraft, but the coalition said that initial reports indicated no militant activity in the area.

#3: Six Afghan policemen and a civilian were killed when their car drove over a landmine in the restive southern province of Uruzgan late Wednesday, an official said. “The policemen were en route to their checkpoint from a village in Chora district when their vehicle rolled on a landmine,” said district police chief Mohammad Gul. “It killed all six as well as a civilian crossing the area,” he added.

#4: A Czech soldier was attacked by an unknown shooter at an advanced base in the Wardak Province in Afghanistan Wednesday morning and he suffered a heavy injury, Czech military's general staff spokeswoman Jana Ruzickova said.

#5: Up to 33 police and five civilians were killed in fighting after Taliban crossed over from Pakistan and attacked a remote region in eastern Afghanistan, an official said Wednesday. Nuristan provincial governor Jamaluddin Badr said about 40 rebels also died in the two days of clashes that followed weeks of tit-for-tat allegations of cross-border attacks that have fanned diplomatic tensions. But the interior ministry contradicted the toll and said 12 policemen had died and another five were wounded. Dozens of rebels who began crossing the border from Pakistan on Tuesday triggered the fight, Badr told AFP, attacking police posts in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan. “The report we have now from the area is that 33 border police and five civilians, two of them women, have been killed,” he said.

#6: Armed militants abducted 28 people including 24 deminers in Farah province 695 km west of Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday, police said. "A group of armed Taliban militants kidnapped 24 de-miners along with four drivers in Balablok district this morning and have shifted them to unknown locations," provincial police chief Syed Mohammad Roshandil told Xinhua. The deminers were busy in cleaning mines from the area when armed Taliban attacked and took them to unknown place, the police chief said. All those kidnapped were employees of a mine clearing agency -- Demining Agency for Afghanistan (DAFA), Roshandil added.