War News for Wednesday, February 29, 2012

British troops to leave Afghanistan - Britain has begun to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan after signing a transit agreement with Kazakhstan, The Daily Telegraph reports.


Reported security incidents
#1: Afghanistan's Interior Ministry says a suicide car bomber has injured at least six civilians in an attack targeting a supply convoy of NATO-led forces in the southern Helmand Province. A ministry statement on February 29 said the bombing occurred in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. Two children were reported among those injured in the attack. A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the incident, but said no one in the convoy was injured and no damage was done to the convoy.

#2: At least six Taliban insurgents were killed when they attacked a Nato base in eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday night, local officials said. The incident took place in the Khoghyani district of the province, when several Taliban insurgents attacked a Nato base, provincial spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, told TOLOnews. No Nato soldiers or Afghan civilians were harmed in the clashed, he said.

#3: Two women and a child were killed on Wednesday when a bomb ripped through their vehicle in Pakistan's Taliban and Al-Qaeda infested tribal belt on the Afghan border, officials said. The blast took place on the outskirts of Bara, a restive town of Khyber district bordering Afghanistan, where US-led foreign and Afghan troops are fighting against a 10-year Taliban insurgency. "At least two women and a child were killed and five others were wounded in a bomb blast," Khyber's administrator Mutahir Zeb Khan told AFP. The bomb was planted on the roadside and detonated remotely as the pick-up vehicle carrying the passengers passed, he said. The target was unclear.

#4: Afghan police killed four insurgents during operations in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the last 24 hours, the Interior Ministry said.

#5: Ten people were injured by a bomb blast in Taliqan, the capital of northern Takhar province on Wednesday, a local official said. "A bomb planted inside the branch of Kabul Bank in Taliqan city was detonated at around 01:15 p.m. local time leaving 10 people injured," spokesman for provincial administration Faiz Mohammad Tawhidi told Xinhua. Some of the injured men are in critical condition, he said.

#6: According to local authorities in southern Helmand province, at least 2 Afghan local police service members were killed by unknown gunmen in this province. The officials further added, the incident took place on Tuesday afternoon at Lashkargah city of southern Helmand province. Mohammad Ismail Hotak Deputy of the provincial police coordination in southern Helmand province said, the two local police service members were killed after unknown gunmen opened fire on them.