Approximately 40 U.S. service members, including two JTAC airmen, and about 20 of their Afghan counterparts went to Do Ab after intelligence reports indicated insurgents overran the district center.
The airmen and soldiers from the 133rd Infantry Regiment, Task Force Ironman, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, TF Red Bulls, fought through a massive ambush from an enemy force numbering in the hundreds, killing more than 100 insurgent fighters in an intense seven-hour battle.
The service members involved said the most amazing part of the whole conflict, though, was there was not one coalition forces casualty. The airmen from the Washington ANG were the key to the battle, they added.
If they hadnt been there dropping bombs, I dont know that we would have gotten out of that valley, U.S. Army Sgt. Edward Kane, an infantry team leader from Portland, Ore., with the Reconnaissance Platoon, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 133rd Inf. Regt., TF Ironman, said. The enemy was getting closer, and their shots were getting more accurate.
The geography of the valley made it extremely challenging for coalition forces.
This is a fairly remote valley, surrounded by high canyon walls. It had been a while, nearly two years, since any American forces had been there, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Chris Adamson, 116th ASOS squadron commander from Tacoma, Wash.
We received several reports indicating that the local Afghan Police had been overrun by 400-500 Taliban fighters, but the information was of questionable value.
[Dawn] Suspected cut-throats have kidnapped the governor of a volatile Afghan district near the border with Pakistain, a senior local official said Saturday.
Musafir Khan Qayumzai, district governor of Ghazi Abad, was snatched Friday along with his son and two bodyguards, said Kunar provincial governor Sayed Fazlullah Waahedi.
"When he was en route to his office from home, he was taken out of his car by faceless myrmidons and was taken away," Waahedi said.
He added that local officials have now "taken steps to release the district governor through tribal mediation and negotiation with the Taliban." The Taliban and other cut-throats frequently kidnap police, soldiers and NGO workers in Afghanistan but it is relatively rare for them to target prominent local politicians.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
I take it district governor is equivalent to the US county commissioner.
[An Nahar] Eleven members of an Afghan family were killed by a roadside kaboom that struck their minibus in southern Afghanistan Saturday, a local official said.
The group -- five men, four women and two children -- were thought to be Afghan refugees returning from Pakistain through the volatile, remote province of Zabul.
The area borders Pakistain, where snuffies who strike in Afghanistan are known to have hideouts.
"Eleven non-combatants were killed after an IED (improvised bomb) hit their vehicle today at 7:50 am (03:20 GMT)," deputy provincial governor Mohammad Jaan Rasulyar told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"They were en route to Ghazni province from Pakistain through Zabul's border area."
Roadside bombs planted by Taliban-led bad boys, who have been waging an insurgency against foreign forces for nearly 10 years, are a frequent cause of casualties among civilians, who are the biggest victims of the war in Afghanistan.
The United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... said that 2,777 people were killed last year, the highest total since the war started in 2001.
The U.N. also said last month that the number of security incidents in Afghanistan this year since March was 51 percent higher than in the same period last year. Most attacks involved IEDs or armed festivities, it added.
Elsewhere in southern Afghanistan, four people were killed Friday by twin landmine blasts in Maruf district of volatile Kandahar province, one of the main focus points of the huge foreign forces' effort in Afghanistan.
"The first took place at around 9:00 pm killing two civilians who were crossing into a garden," said provincial police Chief General Abdul Razaq.
"After a crowd of people gathered to collect the bodies from the first blast, the second kaboom took place, killing another two."
The latest civilian deaths are a reminder of the depth of the task facing the Afghan government as it takes increasing responsibility for security following the announcement of the first wave of foreign troop withdrawals.
There are around 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, some 99,000 of them from the United States.
Limited withdrawals are due to start this month and President Barack B.O. Obama has said that 10,000 US troops will leave this year.
All foreign combat forces are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014 but the international community stresses it wants a long-term relationship with Afghanistan to support the war-torn, poverty-hit country beyond that.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2011 00:00 ||
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2,777 people were killed last year
That's not much of a civil war. The US, with 10 times the population, had 15,000 murders and
nonnegligent manslaughters.
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trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Eleven members of an Afghan family were killed by a 
