War News for Monday, September 01, 2013

Reported security incidents
#1: NATO and Afghan forces fought back Taliban attackers who launched an assault Monday on a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. The insurgents detonated explosives and then began firing guns in an area where NATO supply trucks were parked in Nangarhar province, said Ahmed Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the province's governor. The initial attack was repulsed and Afghan and NATO troops engaged the militants in a firefight for about two hours, during which all the attackers were killed, Abdulzai said. No civilians or military personnel were killed, he said, and only a few NATO supply trucks caught fire during the violence.

At least three people — apparently all attacking insurgents — were killed.

#2: Six boys were killed on a swimming outing in northern Afghanistan, apparently the victims of policemen who fired a rocket into a river, according to Afghan officials and relatives of the victims. The suspects were identified as policemen, and six of them were arrested, including their commander, Lt Ahmed Farid, officials said. The episode took place on Saturday in the village of Drumbak, in Baghlan province, when policemen on one side of the Larkhab River fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the water. But the round went astray and exploded among a group of children bathing on the opposite shore, about 50 yards away.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/09/01/3157978/official-afghan-militants-attack.html#storylink=cpy

#3: A roadside bomb killed nine Pakistani soldiers and wounded 19 others Sunday in a restive northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said. The incident happened in the Boya area of North Waziristan, a stronghold of militants linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

#4: A provincial governor says a vehicle carrying employees of a private mining company has struck a roadside bomb in northern Afghanistan, killing eight. Parwan province leader Abdul Basir Salangi says five people also were wounded on Saturday in Bagram district. He says all of the victims were either labourers or security guards of the company working in a chromite mine.

#5: At least 42 militants were killed and eight wounded in operations since early Sunday, said the Afghan Interior Ministry on Monday morning. "In past 24 hours, Afghan National Police (ANP), army and intelligence agency, supported by the NATO-led coalition troops, conducted several cleanup operations, killing 42 armed Taliban militants, wounding eight and arresting 11 other suspects," the ministry said in a statement providing daily operational updates. The raids were conducted in Nangarhar, Baghlan, Kunduz, Sari Pul, Balkh, Kandahar, Zabul, Logar, Paktika, Paktiya, Herat and Helmand provinces, it noted.


US/DoD: Staff Sgt. Joshua J. Bowden