Bomb kills four girls at Afghan wedding: officials

KANDAHAR: A bomb attack killed four girls attending an Afghan wedding, officials said on Thursday, blaming the attack on Taliban rebels intending to target government employees at the event.

The children, aged between seven and 12, died when an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated as they collected water from a river during celebrations in the southern province of Helmand.

“The children were at the wedding party and this morning they went to collect water when the IED exploded on a footpath,” provincial administration spokesman Omar Zwak told AFP.

Taliban attack: Three Indians killed, close shave for 50 others

The bodies of three Indian workers killed in Tuesday's Taliban attack on a guest house in Kabul are being flown home. While the families are shattered, top Indian government sources have told NDTV that it could have been much worse. Fifty other Indians were also in the same compound that was attacked; they are safe. Sources have told NDTV, however, that the attack was not targeted at Indians but at the foreign company and its links to supplying NATO.

The Indians worked at a Dubai based company's guest house. The company's personnel who also live in the guest house supplied food, water and fuel to NATO forces in Kabul.

Blast in Kabul ahead of NATO handover

An explosion has hit the Afghan capital Kabul near the parliament building, on a day NATO forces formally hand over security to national forces.

Tuesday's blast occurred at around 9am local time in an area called Karta-e Seh, a Kabul police source said.

It came as hundreds of local and international officials gathered on the capital's outskirts ahead of a ceremony to mark the beginning of the final phase of security transition to Afghan forces across the nation.

All seven militants dead at end of Kabul airport attack

KABUL: All seven militants who launched an attack Monday on Kabul airport died in the assault, Afghan police said, adding that no civilian and security force casualties had yet been reported.

"There were seven assailants -- two (suicide bombers) died detonating themselves and five others were killed in fighting," Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, chief of Kabul police, told reporters.

Six suicide attackers killed in Afghanistan: officials

KABUL: Afghan security forces killed six suicide bombers who attacked the Panjshir provincial governor's office early Wednesday, officials said, in an assault on one of the most stable areas of the country.

Panjshir, an ethnically Tajik area northeast of Kabul, was a bastion of anti-Taliban resistance during the extremists' 1996-2001 regime, and has been among the most peaceful provinces in Afghanistan since they were ousted.

Three British soldiers killed in Afghanistan

KABUL: Three Nato troops killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan were British, officials said on Wednesday.

The three soldiers from the Royal Highland Fusiliers died on Tuesday when their vehicle was hit on a routine patrol in the district of Nahr-e Saraj, part of the southern province Helmand.

“Their deaths come as a great loss to all those serving in Task Force Helmand,” army spokesman Major Richard Morgan said in a statement from London.

Bomb suspicion diverts Turkish plane en route to Afghanistan

A Turkish Airlines plane en route to Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, returned to Turkey after an abandoned mobile phone found onboard caused panic.

An Airbus 320 with flight number TK-706 left Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport with 135 passengers at 3:05 this morning, but a mobile phone alarmed the cabin crew when no one claimed ownership.

The captain decided to land after informing police, who took strong precautionary measures in the apron.
The plane landed at Atatürk Airport nearly 2.5 hours after taking off.

Ready to work for peace without Pakistan: Kabul

KABUL: Afghanistan is shocked by Pakistan’s ‘complacency’ in the nascent Afghan peace process and is ready to work without Islamabad’s help on reconciliation, Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin told Reuters on Wednesday.

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It was the first time Afghanistan has suggested the possibility of going it alone without its neighbour. Regional power Pakistan is seen as critical to stabilising Afghanistan because of its long ties to insurgent groups. Ludin also said the government would look to senior Taliban figures recently handed over by the United States in Bagram prison to urge militants to pursue peace. He did not elaborate.

Kabul, Islamabad holding talks on extradition treaty

PESHAWAR: Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, Mohammad Umer Daudzai, has said the Afghan and Pakistan governments were holding talks on an extradition treaty that would resolve the problem of handing over wanted persons to each other.
Talking to a small group of reporters during his visit to Peshawar on Wednesday, he pointed out that Afghanistan has signed judicial agreements with Iran and Tajikistan and would like to conclude a similar one with Pakistan. “The judicial agreement covers extradition and also the issue of attorneys and witnesses in legal cases,” he added.

Daudzai recalled that Pakistan had declined to hand over jailed Afghan Taliban figures to Afghanistan citing the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries. In reply to a question regarding Pakistan’s request to the Afghan government to hand over Pakistani Taliban commander Mauivi Faqir Mohammad to it, he said Kabul was still trying to determine if the man captured in Afghanistan is Faqir Mohammad. “We have assured the Pakistan government that he won’t be released once it was determined that he was indeed Maulvi Faqir Mohammad. However, we won’t be able to hand him over to Pakistan as we don’t have an extradition treaty,” he argued.

US cedes full control of Bagram prison to Afghan forces

KABUL :Afghanistan on Monday took full control of Bagram military prison from the United States, healing one running sore in their testy relationship as US-led forces wind down more than a decade of war.

President Hamid Karzai had made the fate of the detention centre north of Kabul part of his ill-tempered push to regain sovereignty over key matters from the Americans, ahead of next year's pullout of foreign combat troops.