Kabul awakes to more explosions and heavy gunfire

April 16, 2012

Kabul_Ap16


Kabul, April 16: Loud explosions and intense gunfire erupted at dawn in the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday after heavy fighting overnight between security forces and militants holed up in the central diplomatic area.

NATO helicopters launched strafing attack runs on gunmen hidden in a construction site overlooking the NATO headquarters and several embassies, including the British and German missions.

Insurgents fired automatic weapons at Afghan army special forces and police, who responded with rocket-propelled grenades during street fighting in the capital that has so far lasted almost 16 hours.

Explosive flashes lit alleys and surrounding streets.

The assault by the insurgents, which began at midday on Sunday with attacks on embassies, a supermarket, a hotel and the parliament, is one of the most serious on the capital since US-backed Afghan forces removed the Taliban from power in 2001.

It highlights the ability of militants to strike the heavily guarded diplomatic zone of the city even after more than 10 years of war.

The Ministry of Interior said 19 insurgents, including suicide bombers, had died in the attacks in Kabul and in at least three provinces and two were captured. Fourteen police officers and nine civilians were wounded.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks, but some officials said the Haqqanis, a network of tribal militants who live along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, were likely involved.

"My guess, based on previous experience here, is this is a set of Haqqani network operations out of north Waziristan and the Pakistani tribal areas," American Ambassador Ryan Crocker told CNN.

"Frankly I don't think the Taliban is good enough."

The attacks were another election-year setback in Afghanistan for US President Barack Obama, who wants to present the long campaign against the Taliban as a success before the departure of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

"These attacks are the beginning of the spring offensive and we had planned them for months," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters.

He said the onslaught was revenge for a series of incidents involving American troops in Afghanistan - including the burning of Korans at a NATO base and the massacre of 17 civilians by a US soldier - and vowed that there would be more such attacks.

The Taliban said on Sunday the main targets were the German and British embassies and the headquarters of the NATO-led force. Several Afghan members of parliament joined security forces repelling attackers from a roof near the parliament.

FAMILIAR TACTICS

The attacks in Kabul come a month before a NATO summit at which the United States and its allies are supposed to put finishing touches on plans for the transition to Afghan security control, and days before a meeting of defense and foreign ministers in Brussels to prepare for the alliance's summit in Chicago.

They also come in the run-up to Western forces leaving Afghanistan under a plan to hand over responsibilities to the Afghan forces by 2014.

That may prompt some to draw comparisons with the 1968 Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. There are major differences in the scale and length of the events and casualties but the assault may still challenge assertions that America is winning.

Afghan security forces apparently failed to learn lessons from a similar operation in Kabul last September, when insurgents entered construction sites to use them as positions for rocket and gun attacks.

On Sunday, insurgents entered a multi-storey construction site overlooking the diplomatic triangle and behind a supermarket. There they unleashed rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, protected from the view of security forces by green protective netting wrapped around the skeleton of the building.

Hours earlier in neighboring Pakistan, dozens of Islamist militants had stormed a prison in the dead of night and freed nearly 400 inmates, including one on death row for trying to assassinate former President Pervez Musharraf.


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News Network
April 22,2020

London, Apr 22: The toll from coronavirus in the United Kingdom has jumped above 18,000 after 759 more deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, the Department of Health and Social Care announced in a statistical bulletin on Wednesday.

In total, 18,100 people have died in the UK hospitals after contracting COVID-19 as of 16:00 GMT on Tuesday.

A further 4,451 new cases of the disease were reported over the preceding 24 hours up to 08:00 GMT on Wednesday, the ministry said. The total number of cases reported since the start of the outbreak now stands at 1,33,495.

On Tuesday, the Office of National Statistics published a report stating that the coronavirus disease death toll as of April 10, when accounting for deaths in care homes and private residences, was 41 per cent higher than the government's figures.

In parliament on Wednesday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated that the United Kingdom has reached the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak, praising the social distancing measures enforced in the country.

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News Network
January 23,2020

Jan 23: Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan called on Wednesday for the United Nations to help mediate between nuclear armed India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

"This is a potential flashpoint," Khan said during a media briefing at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, adding that it was time for the "international institutions ... specifically set up to stop this" to "come into action".

The Indian government in August revoked the constitutional autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir, splitting the Muslim-majority region into two federal territories in a bid to integrate it fully with the rest of the country.

Kashmir is claimed in full by both India and Pakistan. The two countries have gone to war twice over it, and both rule parts of it. India's portion has been plagued by separatist violence since the late 1980s.

Khan said his biggest fear was how New Delhi would respond to ongoing protests in India over a citizenship law that many feel targets Muslims.

"We're not close to a conflict right now ... What if the protests get worse in India, and to distract attention from that, what if ..."

The prime minister said he had discussed the prospect of war between his country and India in a Tuesday meeting with US President Donald Trump. Trump later said he had offered to help mediate between the two countries.

Khan said Pakistan and the United States were closer in their approach to the Taliban armed rebellion in Afghanistan than they had been for many years. He said he had never seen a military solution to that conflict.

"Finally the position of the US is there should be negotiations and a peace plan."

In a separate on-stage conversation later on Wednesday, Khan said he had told Trump in their meeting that a war with Iran would be "a disaster for the world". Trump had not responded, Khan said.

Khan made some of his most straightforward comments when asked why Pakistan has been muted in defence of Uighurs in China.

China has been widely condemned for setting up complexes in remote Xinjiang province that Beijing describes as "vocational training centres" to stamp out ""extremism and give people new skills.

The United Nations says at least one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained.

When pressed on China's policies, Khan said Pakistan's relations with Beijing were too important for him to speak out publicly.

"China has helped us when we were at rock bottom. We are really grateful to the Chinese government, so we have decided that any issues we have had with China we will handle privately."

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Agencies
July 17,2020

Washington, Jul 17: US President Donald Trump's economic adviser Larry Kudlow has said that TikTok may cut off ties to its Chinese parent and become a 100 per cent American company to circumvent demands to ban it as India has done.

"I think TikTok is going to pull out of the holding company which is China-run and operate as an independent American company," he told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

The US has not made a final decision on whether to ban it - which has been suggested by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said.

TikTok being divested by ByteDance Technology Company "is a much better solution than banning or pushing away", said Kudlow, who is the Director of the National Economic Council.

He said that its services will be located in the US and "it will become an hundred per cent American company".

If it becomes a US company without Chinese links, India may have to reconsider the ban on the short video app wildly popular in the country.

India banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps on June 29 citing threats to its defence and national security.

The ban came after a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

Under Beijing's National Security Law, all Chinese companies have to provide intelligence requested by the government, creating risks for users and their countries.

India was TikTok's biggest market outside of China, where it operates as Douyin.

There were about 200 million users in India and over 300 million downloads.

The US comes next with over 30 million users for the app.

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