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| Afghanistan | ||||||
| Afghan officials: Militants storm gov't building in Khost | ||||||
| 2011-05-23 | ||||||
| [Emirates 24/7] Gunmen wearing boom jackets stormed a government building in eastern Afghanistan early Sunday and engaged in a shootout with Afghan cops who surrounded the compound, officials said. The attack came a day after a Taliban jacket wallah infiltrated the capital's main military hospital and killed at least six Afghan medical students. In Sunday's incident, one guard was killed as the attackers - three or four men armed with guns and wearing explosives strapped to their bodies - shot their way into the traffic department compound of Khost city at about 5 am, said Gen. Raz Mohammad Oryakhail, the army commander for Khost province. ... across the border from Miranshah, within commuting distance of Haqqani hangouts such as Datta Khel and probably within sight of Mordor. Khost is populated by six different tribes of Pashtuns, the largest probably being the Khostwal, from which it takes its name... The gunbattle was still going on more than two hours later, with the assailants inside the second floor of the building and shooting down at police and soldiers outside, he said. Almost all over now. Latest report was three dead bad guyz, one dead cop, trying to take the last bad guy alive...
No one immediately grabbed credit for the attack, but it matched the pattern of Taliban assaults on government installations.
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the style of the American pants... forces who have sharply expanded checkpoints and security cordons in the capital as the Taliban intensifies their attacks ahead of a planned US drawdown in July. No foreign medical doctors or nurses were among the dead or maimed, Afghan and NATO officials said. There are a number of military doctors and nurses from various NATO countries at the hospital as part of the alliance's mission to train Afghan forces. All those killed were eating lunch inside a tent used by medical students for meals, Defense Ministry front man Gen. Mohammed Zaher said. The bombing was condemned by Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... and NATO. The United Nations ...Parkinson's Law on an international scale... called it a violation of "international humanitarian law." The Taliban have stepped up attacks as part of their spring offensive against NATO, Afghan government installations and officials.
... who abandoned all hope when he entered there... by US forces in Pakistain earlier this month. The effectiveness of the Taliban's campaign will in part determine the size of President Barack B.O.Obama's planned drawdown of American troops. He has said its size will depend on conditions on the ground.
Taliban front man Zabiullah Mujahid said Saturday's attack targeted foreign trainers and Afghan doctors who work with them. He claimed two bombers took part, but Defense Ministry front man Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said only one was involved in the attack at the Mohammad Daud Khan military hospital. The Taliban have promised to carry out attacks in major population centers, and earlier this month tried to take over key government installations in the southern city of Kandahar - which was once their capital and stronghold. But that attack failed and more than two dozen beturbanned goons were killed. US and NATO military officials, however, have questioned the Taliban's ability to mount large operations. Thousands of beturbanned goons,including midlevel commanders, have been killed or captured and hundreds of weapons caches seized during battles over the winter. Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, the second-ranking US general in Afghanistan, predicted recently that the Taliban - having lost ground during the fall and winter - will employ more indirect tactics such as suicide kabooms and liquidations. Mujahid said that was part of the Taliban's strategy against the government. "The mujahedeen are able to infiltrate into the ranks of the enemy and using opportunities are able to attack," he said. It was unclear whether the bomber was a member of the hospital staff, but the ability of the attacker to get inside the heavily guarded hospital raised fresh concerns about possible infiltration of Afghan cops. The facility is in one of Kabul's most heavily protected neighborhoods and close to NATO headquarters, the US Embassy and other diplomatic facilities. Security checks are stringent and all visitors are searched. In the most embarrassing breach of a government facility, a Taliban krazed killer opened fire inside the Afghan Defense Ministry on April 18, killing two Afghan soldiers. At the time, the Taliban said one of their agents who was also an army officer planned the attack to coincide with a visit of the French defense minister, who was not in the ministry at the time. | ||||||
| Posted by:Fred |