Taliban – praag.org

Battle between ISIS and Taliban heat up

Taliban militants detonated explosives and fired rockets in an attempted attack on the Afghan Parliament as lawmakers were preparing to vote on a new defense minister Monday.

A large car bomb exploded near the outer wall of the parliament compound, sending a thick plume of smoke into the sky. Six Taliban fighters then tried to storm inside, said police spokesman Ebadullah Karimi.

Afghan security forces managed to fend off the attackers, who then moved into nearby building, firing rockets and AK-47 machine guns. All six attackers were killed in the ensuing firefight, Karimi said.

Lawmakers told the Afghan broadcaster Tolo TV that they and their colleagues were meeting when a huge explosion blew out windows in the building and gunshots rang out. Government officials ran out of the building, they said.

The members of parliament had assembled for a general meeting at which a confidence vote on Mohammad Masoom Stanikzai, the government’s nominee for defense minister, was to be held.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said on his Twitter account that the group chose to target the parliament on the day of the defense minister vote.

Afghanistan is bracing for an upsurge in violence as spring begins with militants associating themselves with Islamic State.

Islamic State fighters have reportedly attacked a Taliban convoy in the country’s eastern Nangarhar province, killing at least 10 militants.

Many researchers believe it is the beginning of a long and violent battle for Afghanistan’s control.

Isis claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Saturday, which appears to be the first major attack in Afghanistan by insurgents aligning themselves with the group which has been wreaking havoc across Syria and Iraq.

Siegfried O. Wolf, a South Asia researcher at the University of Heidelberg, believes the ISIS-Taliban battle could be “extremely dangerous for Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

The Afghan Taliban have sent a letter to Islamic State’s leader urging the rival jihadist group to stop recruiting in Afghanistan, saying there is room for only “one flag, one leadership” in their fight to re-establish strict Islamist rule.

The missive comes amid heavy fighting this week in eastern Afghanistan between the Taliban and breakaway factions who now swear allegiance to Islamic State.

Six dead in US drone strike on religious seminary

A US drone killed six people in northwest Pakistan Thursday in only the second such strike outside the country’s lawless tribal districts, threatening to inflame tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

The missile attack targeted a religious seminary that security officials said belonged to the Haqqani network — blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan — in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Earlier this month the network’s chief financier Nasirudddin Haqqani was gunned down in mysterious circumstances in a village on the edge of Islamabad.

Thursday’s drone strike was the first in the country since Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a similar attack in the North Waziristan tribal district on November 1.

That attack prompted a furious response from Pakistan, with the interior minister accusing Washington of sabotaging fledgling peace efforts with the Taliban and opposition parties calling for a blockade of NATO supply lines to Afghanistan.

“The drone strike targeting the seminary killed six people,” police official Farid Khan told AFP.

Two local security officials identified two of the dead as Mufti Ahmad Jan and Mufti Hameedullah and said they were both members of the Haqqani network.

“The seminary belonged to one Qari Noor Muhammad, a previously unknown figure. It was not clear if he was present in the seminary at the time of attack”, an official said.

Washington has long demanded that Pakistan take action against the Haqqanis, who are blamed for numerous bloody attacks in Afghanistan including one on the US embassy in Kabul in 2011.

US officials have in the past accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of links to the Haqqani network, which has bases in the tribal districts.

Since 2004 the United States has carried out hundreds of missile attacks from unmanned aircraft on suspected militants linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The vast majority of them have hit targets in the seven tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, which have a separate legal and political governance system from the rest of the country.

Thursday was the first time a US drone hit a district inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The only previous strike outside the tribal areas came in Bannu district, a so-called “frontier region”.

The number and identity of casualties is often hard to determine because the tribal areas are off-limits to foreign journalists and aid organisations, but the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates deaths at between 2,500 and 3,700.

Hundreds of civilians have died in the attacks, according to various estimates, prompting outrage in Pakistan and abroad.

A major report last month from rights campaigners Amnesty International said the US may be guilty of war crimes.

The Pakistani government officially condemns drone strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, and last month Sharif urged US President Barack Obama to halt the programme during a meeting in Washington.

Despite their deep unpopularity in Pakistan, the US sees them as a vital tool in the fight against militants in the tribal areas.

One dead, 21 injured in US consulate attack in Afghanistan

US consulate building in Herat, a former hotel

Taliban militants attacked a US consulate in western Afghanistan Friday, killing an Afghan guard and injuring 21 people including 16 civilians, police said.

“Two attackers detonated their explosives-laden truck at the first entrance of the US consulate at 5:30 am (0100 GMT) in Herat city, injuring four guards of a private security company and two policemen,” said Rahmatullah Safi, police chief of Herat province.

“Following the explosion, three others who were in another vehicle opened fire on the guards,” Safi told dpa.

“One of the injured guards died due to bleeding,” he said.

The three remaining assailants were killed when the police returned fire, he said.

At least 16 civilians were injured by flying glass, according to police.

“The people were sleeping in their houses around the consulate compound and were injured when the strong explosion broke their windows,” said Abdul Raouf Ahmadi, a spokesman for Herat province police.

US Ambassador to Kabul James B Cunningham condemned the attack.

“We are grateful for the quick response of the Afghan and ISAF security forces, who secured the facility and kept our personnel safe,” Cunningham was quoted by a statement, referring to the International Security Assistance Force or ISAF.

He also said that “many Afghan civilians were killed in the attack,” while police said that only one guard was killed.

“The ISAF helicopters were flying over the area to help security forces if needed,” Ahmadi said.

Another police officer said consulate staff were evacuated by helicopter, but Safi denied this, saying the diplomats were safe inside the compound.

Earlier news reports said three security personnel were killed.

The US State Department confirmed the attack, but not the casualties.

“There are no American casualties,” the department’s deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said. “At this point there may be one wounded contract security member, and there are likely wounded Afghan police, though numbers are unknown.”

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

“A group of martyrdom-seeking mujahideen attacked the US consulate this morning, in which a large number of US troops and local security personnel were killed and parts of the consulate buildings were damaged,” the group’s spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmad said. -dpa

Female Indian author shot dead by Taliban

Suspected Taliban militants shot dead the Indian author Sushmita Banerjee, writer of a popular book about her dramatic escape from the Taliban in the 90s, in eastern Afghan province of Paktika on Wednesday night, police said on Thursday.

“We found her bullet riddled body near Madrassa on the outskirts of Sharan city (provincial capital) this morning,” provincial police chief Dawlat Khan Zadran told AFP, confirming earlier reports from Indian media. – AFP

Mass jail break in Pakistan

The assault on the heavily guarded Central Prison in the city of Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan took place despite reports that regional officials had received intelligence a fortnight ago suggesting such an attack was imminent.

The carefully planned attack underlines the growing capabilities of the Pakistani branch of the Taliban, an offshoot of the Islamist insurgents of the same name in neighboring Afghanistan.

Fighting continued into the early hours of Tuesday, with explosions and machine gunfire rattling the city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on the edge of Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

At least 12 people were killed, officials said, including five policemen and four prisoners from the minority Shi’ite sect whose throats were slashed by gunmen, officials said. The Taliban are mostly majority Sunni Muslims.

Mushtaq Jadoon, the town’s civil commissioner, said the 253 escaped prisoners included 30 top militants and six people on death row. Those who escaped are believed to have been whisked away to nearby South and North Waziristan, areas where the Taliban has strongholds.

As the attack unfolded, gunmen blew up electricity lines to the prison and detonated bombs to breach the outer walls.

They fought their way inside using rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, and called the names of Taliban prisoners they wanted to release through loud speakers.

Once inside, attackers shot open most of the locks and used bombs to blast their way deep into the prison, shouting “All the locks are broken! Those who want to escape, now is your chance,” prison officials who were there at the time told Reuters.

Security forces said they had imposed a curfew on the city and the gunbattle was over by dawn. A Reuters reporter at the scene saw security forces and bomb disposal squads conducting searches amid ruined walls strewn with bullet holes.

The attack came a year after a similar mass jailbreak in the northern town of Bannu which Taliban militants said was carried out with inside help from prison guards.

There was no official comment from the central government.

Another security official said provincial authorities received warning of the impending attack two weeks ago.

He said phone intercepts indicated the militants had been planning a jail break and interrogations of captured fighters confirmed it. Security officials had alerted the provincial governor of the threat based on the intercepts.

As the gunbattle unfolded, gunmen took over a nearby house and hospital, holding the residents hostage as they fired on police from the rooftops and laid ambushes for reinforcements.

A senior Taliban official told Reuters separately the attack on the prison was masterminded by Adnan Rashid, a Taliban commander who was himself freed when his prison in the northern town of Bannu was overran by militants last year.

After that attack, militants told Reuters they had been helped by insiders in the security services. An inquiry later found there were far fewer guards on duty than there should have been and those who were there lacked sufficient ammunition. – Reuters

US Marine who urinated on Taliban dead says he’d do it again

A Marine who was fined and demoted for urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan in 2011 says he would do it again.

“I regret maybe any repercussions it might have had on the Marines. But do I regret doing it? Hell no,” Sgt. Joseph Chamblin told WSOC-TV in Charlotte, N.C., adding that he would do it again.

The infamous incident was videotaped and uploaded to YouTube last year, becoming international news and raising fears of retaliation by Afghan troops against their coalition trainers.

“These were the same guys that were killing our family, killing our brothers,” said Sgt. Chamblin, who was on a mission to stop Taliban insurgents from making roadside bombs.

One of his sniper team members, Sgt. Mark Bradley, was killed by a buried bomb days before the incident.

“We’re human,” he said. “Who wouldn’t if you lost your brother or mother? Wouldn’t you want revenge?”

Sgt. Chamblin said he didn’t consider endangering other troops by the act, but considered the psychological effect it would have on the enemy “because if an infidel touches the body, they’re not going to Mecca or paradise.”

“So now these insurgents see what happens when you mess with us,” said Sgt. Chamblin, adding that he is planning to retire in September and is writing a book.

The Marines court-martialed nine troops for the incident. Sgt. Chamblin, a 15-year veteran, pleaded guilty for urinating on the bodies and dereliction of duty and was fined $500 and demoted, WSOC reported.

“Do you want the Marine Corps to be a group of Boy Scout pretty boys or do you want guys that will go out and kill the people trying to take advantage of your country and kill Americans?” he said. “Which do you want? Because you can’t have both.” – Washington Times

Hackers publish German military secrets

Hackers from the group Anonymous said Wednesday they had accessed classified German files and posted them online, revealing details of the country’s military operations in Afghanistan.

Anonymous said it obtained the data from a server at the Bundestag or German parliament. The group has claimed responsibility for a series of leaks of confidential data worldwide in the past year.

The military documents were collected for an inquiry, now finished, into a September 2009 airstrike by US jets under German orders that killed more than 140 Taliban fighters and Afghan civilians.

Omid Nouripour, a Green Party legislator who was on the inquiry committee, told dpa the documents posted online were authentic. He said he had not seen anything in the online version that would put lives in danger.

The Bundestag administration said it was checking the leak. A spokeswoman said it was possible the documents had been merely appendices to the inquiry’s report.

The inquiry criticized the 2009 airstrike.