War News for Tuesday, January 17, 2011

The DoD is reporting a new death previously unreported by the military. Sgt. 1st Class Benjamin B. Wise died at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl Germany on Sunday, January 15th. He was wounded from a small arms fire attack in Balkh province, Afghanistan on Monday, January 9th.


Albania Sends Fresh Soldiers to Afghanistan

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, January 17, Jan. 16th.


Reported security incidents
#1: Afghan authorities say a prominent anti-Taliban tribal leader has been assassinated while praying inside a mosque in the southern city of Kandahar. Armed insurgents entered the mosque and gunned down Mohammad Nahim Agha Mama as he prayed Tuesday morning. The Kandahar governor's office condemned the killing as "an anti-Islamic and antihuman act" that desecrated a place of worship. It said the Pashtun tribal leader and local council member of Dand district was well-known for encouraging peace and urging his followers not to join the Taliban.

#2: Three American private contractors working for the Defense Department were killed when their helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan on Monday, their company said. The contractors' company, AAR Airlift, said that there were no other passengers on the helicopter and that the cause of the crash was not yet known.

#3: Two people while planning mine were killed on Sunday with their own mine in Maiwand district of Kandahar province. According to Zulmay Ayoubi, Kandahar governor’s spokesman two people while planting a mine in a public road in Musa area of Maiwand district were killed due to explosion of their own mine. Ayoubi said the individuals had planted eight mines on the roadside which one of them blown while being planted.

#4: Ten militants were killed in a skirmish with Pakistani paramilitary forces in the Kohlu area of the southwestern Baluchistan province, security officials said.

#5: Militants set off explosives next to a natural gas pipeline in the Sui area of Baluchistan, damaging a section, local government officials said.

#6: An Afghan Taliban local leader was killed in a search operation in the country's eastern province of Ghazni, a provincial security official said on Tuesday. "Based on intelligence, a special unite of Afghan Directorate of Security (NDS) launched a search operation to capture a Taliban local leader in Gilan district of Ghazni province Monday night," head of provincial department of NDS, Amir Shah Sadat, told reporters in provincial capital of Ghanzi city. He said two other insurgents were also killed in the incident, adding that no civilian or NDS personnel were injured in the raid in the province 125 km south of capital city of Kabul.

#7: Afghan and coalition forces killed seven insurgents and detained five suspected individuals in eastern Afghanistan during operations throughout the past 24 hours, Jan. 16.


DoD: Sgt. 1st Class Benjamin B. Wise