Four people killed in Afghanistan Kandahar bomb blast

The bomb was planted in a motorbike, officials say, and and a woman and a child are among the dead. No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Spin Boldak in Kandahar province is a busy border crossing close to the Pakistani town of Chaman.

The town is situated 70 miles (110km) from the provincial capital, Kandahar.

Last week a Taliban suicide car bomber killed at least nine people and wounded 10 others in an attack at Jalalabad airport in eastern Afghanistan.

The insurgents said the bombing was in revenge for a Koran-burning incident at a US air base near Kabul a week ago.

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Six British soldiers missing, feared dead after attack on armoured vehicle

Six soldiers are believed to have been killed after an armoured vehicle was caught in an explosion in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said today.

If the soldiers, who only started their tour of the country a week ago, are confirmed dead it will be the single biggest loss of British troops in Afghanistan from enemy action since the war began in 2001.

It will also take the total number of deaths of British service personnel in the war-torn country to more than 400.

The group - which included five soldiers from the 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment and one from the 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment - was on a mounted patrol when their Warrior Armoured Fighting Vehicle was struck at 7pm last night.

The Ministry of Defence said two Warrior vehicles were conducting a routine unpartnered patrol on the border between Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

One of the vehicles, which has two drivers and four passengers, was hit either by an improvised explosive device laid by the Taliban or an anti-tank mine left by the Russians decades ago northwest of Durai Junction.

It is understood the vehicle caught fire after the blast and ammunition on board is believedRecovery teams working against terrible weather conditions have not yet been able to reach the vehicle, hence why the deaths have not yet been officially confirmed. But the families of the soldiers have been told to expect the worst.

There were no injuries to the soldiers in the second Warrior following the blast.

Speaking in Downing Street, Prime Minister David Cameron said: 'This is a desperately sad day for our country and desperately sad of course for the families concerned.

'It is a reminder of the huge price that we are paying for the work we are doing in Afghanistan and the sacrifice that our troops have made and continue to make.

'I do believe it's important work for our national security right here at home but of course this work will increasingly be carried out by Afghan soldiers and we all want to see that transition take place.

If they are confirmed to be dead, it would take the total number of British forces personnel or MoD civilians who have died while serving in the war-torn region to more than 400 since the start of operations in October 2001.

It would become the biggest single loss of life in one incident since an RAF Nimrod aircraft crashed after a fire broke out on the plane moments after mid-air refuelling in 2006.

A total of 14 service personnel died in the incident.

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Video of Marines urinating on Taliban corpses

U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has "identified them" and their originating base in the United States.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marines believe they have identified the troops seen urinating in a shocking video on the corpses of insurgents in Afghanistan, a senior American military official said Thursday.

The video, which shows what appear to be American forces urinating on dead Taliban fighters, prompted anger in Afghanistan, but the insurgent group said it would not harm nascent efforts to broker peace talks.

Posted on YouTube and other websites, the video shows four men in camouflage Marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: “Have a nice day, buddy.” Another makes a lewd joke.

The Pentagon has “identified them” and their originating base in the United States, said the official on condition of anonymity, effectively dampening speculation about whether or not the men pictured were actually U.S. personnel.

A second official, U.S. Marines spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Plenzler, said they have “identified the unit,” but added that “we cannot release the name of the unit at this time since the incident is being investigated.”

U.S. cable network CNN quoted an unnamed U.S. Marine official as saying the military branch was “confident” the troops in the inflammatory video were from the 3rd Battalion 2nd Marine Regiment, based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

The unit deployed to Afghanistan, mainly in Helmand province, in early 2011 and returned in September or October, CNN reported.

The administration of President Barack Obama has expressed revulsion at the video, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta condemning the acts as “utterly deplorable” and vowing a full investigation by the Marines and the Kabul-based International Security Assistance Force.

Panetta also spoke by telephone with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney, who denounced acts depicted in the video as “deplorable, reprehensible and unacceptable.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the “deplorable behavior” that is reflected in the video of the Marines and said it is “absolutely inconsistent with American values, with the standards of behavior that we expect from our military personnel.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement that “the government of Afghanistan is deeply disturbed” at “desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans.”

“This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms,” he said.

“We expressly ask the U.S. government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

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Woman To Be Freed From Jail After Agreeing To Marry Her Rapist

A 19yr old Afghan woman, Gulnaz, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for adultery after relatives discovered the unmarried lady was pregnant. (It's a crime in Afghanistan to have s*x outside of marriage).

Gulnaz told authorities that her cousin's husband had raped, and made her pregnant and that she had tried to fight him off on the night he attacked her. The alleged rapist, who was also arrested and locked up for adultery, denied it was rape.

After Gulnaz incarceration, the EU and other world human rights organizations got involved and called on the Afghan president to release the rape victim. Yesterday Thursday December 1, Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned Gulnaz, on the condition that she will marry her attacker.

Gulnaz had initially refused a judge's offer of freedom if she agreed to marry the rapist. She changed her mind because she didn't want her child, who had been born in prison, to grow up in prison. And also because that was the the only way to bring peace between her, her family and her rapists family, as she is said to have brought shame to both families.

About half of the 300 to 400 women jailed in Afghanistan are imprisoned for so-called "moral crimes" such as s*x outside marriage, or running away from their husbands, according to reports by the United Nations and research organizations.

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Suicide bomber kills ex-Afghan President Rabbani

Burhanuddin Rabbani

Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed a government peace council set up to facilitate contacts with Taliban insurgents, was assassinated Tuesday by a suicide bomber concealing explosives in his turban, officials said. Four of Rabbani's bodyguards also died and a key presidential adviser was wounded.

President Hamid Karzai cut short a visit to the U.S. over the attack, which dealt a harsh blow to peace efforts after a decade of war.

The turban bomber entered Rabbani's house in the capital Kabul on Tuesday evening and blew himself up inside, said Mohammad Zahir, the chief of criminal investigation for the Kabul police.

Rabbani headed the country's High Peace Council, which was set up by the Afghan government to work toward a political solution to the decade-long war. However, it had made little headway since it was formed a year ago.

Rabbani was president of the Afghan government that preceded the Taliban rule. After he was driven from Kabul in 1996, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, mostly minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, who swept to power in Kabul after the Taliban's fall. Rabbani is an ethnic Tajik.

His killing dampens hopes of starting peace negotiations with Taliban insurgents and also will hamper efforts to keep regional and ethnic rivalries, which feed the insurgency, in check.

As one of the wise old man of Afghan politics and the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Rabanni's role in the attempts to reach out to the Taliban and seeking a political deal with them — with the U.S. blessing — will be hard to replicate in the near future.

His death could unleash a well of resentment building up among some senior Northern Alliance members, who accuse President Hamid Karzai of colluding with the Taliban.

Already Afghanistan's ethnic minorities have begun to re-arm in the face of negotiations with the Taliban. Rabbani's death is likely to accelerate the re-arming and lay the foundation for a bitter civil war once U.S. troops leave the country in 2014.

Karzai's adviser Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai was wounded in the attack. A relative who answered Stanekzai's phone said that the wounds did not appear to be life-threatening, but Stanekzai was in the hospital. The relative declined to give his name because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Stanekzai is chief executive of the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program, a highly touted program funded by the U.S. and its coalition allies to bring mid- and lower-level Taliban back into Afghan society. The program has so far only managed to reintegrated about 2,000 of the estimated 25,000-40,000 insurgents in Afghanistan.

Reintegration was the other half of reconciliation, which is aims to try and broker a peace deal with the senior Taliban leadership.

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