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U.S. Paratrooper Killed in Afghanistan
Associated Press | October 31, 2005

KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. paratrooper and a British soldier died in attacks Saturday as Afghan officials prepared to announce final results from last month’s historic legislative elections amid some of the worst bloodshed since the polls.

Violence over the last week killed 23 people, including 14 suspected militants and two worshippers dragged from a mosque and shot, underlining the challenges of bringing stability and strengthening Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy four years after the ouster of the Taliban.

Election organizers plan to release the final list of newly elected legislators in the next few days, said Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the election commission. The announcement has been delayed by widespread fraud that undermined the polls’ legitimacy.

Human rights advocates warn that at least half of those listed as provisional winners are former warlords or others still linked to armed groups responsible for much of the violence during the country’s quarter-century of war.

In the latest fighting, an American paratrooper was killed Saturday when his patrol came under fire in volatile eastern Khost province, a U.S. military statement said.

American forces responded with small-arms fire, artillery and air attacks, chasing off the militants. It was not immediately clear if any of the assailants were killed.

The death brought to 203 the number of U.S. troops killed in and around Afghanistan since a U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban’s hard-line Islamic regime in late 2001 after it refused to close al-Qaida bases and turn over Osama Bin Laden following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

In the north, gunmen attacked NATO-led peacekeepers as they patrolled in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Saturday, killing one British soldier and wounding five others, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said.

Security forces cordoned off the area and arrested four suspects, said Capt. Michele Cortese, a spokesman at the NATO force’s headquarters in Kabul.

Mazar-e-Sharif has been considered relatively safe because Taliban loyalists are not believed to operate there and it was not immediately clear what motivated the attack.

In Kabul, security forces discovered a large weapons cache, including rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and bombs, according to a statement by the NATO force.

The U.S. military reported that American and Afghan troops fought three battles with militants in southern Uruzgan province Thursday after they were attacked with assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Attack aircraft rushed to the area and pounded rebel positions. The fighting killed 13 militants and an Afghan soldier, while a U.S. Soldier and four Afghan troops were wounded.

On Friday, U.S. troops attacked a group of militants as they planted a roadside bomb in eastern Paktika province, capturing two and killing one as he tried to flee, another U.S. statement said.

In other violence, suspected Taliban rebels fired at a vehicle late Friday in southern Helmand province and killed a boy and two brothers, one of whom was a prominent pro-government figure, said Ghulam Muhiddin, a local official.

Also Friday, militants attacked Muslim worshippers in two provinces near the border with Pakistan, officials said. In Paktia, gunmen dragged two men from their prayers in a mosque and killed both outside. In neighboring Khost, attackers shot a tribal elder to death as he prayed.

Fighting since January has killed nearly 1,500 people, the most in any year since the Taliban’s fall.

U.S. military commanders predicted a rise in violence in the weeks following the parliamentary elections, but say they expect fighting to ease during winter as heavy snow blocks high mountain passes used by insurgents.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Dagmar Mikko and son Matthew Mikko-Fortier walk past some of the 2,000 candelaria at a memorial to soldiers lost in the Iraq war Oct. 30 on the Delaney Park Strip. The memorial was conceived by Jennifer Davis, whose husband is serving in Iraq. She said she wanted “to give a visual representation of what 2,000 deaths looks like. These are individuals. Just the process of getting 2,000 bags, stamping 2,000 stars, the sheer effort it takes, it (the deaths) becomes real. What I want people to think about is, whichever side you’re on, you need to understand what you’re supporting.”

Seven US troops killed in Iraq
By Alastair Macdonald 51 minutes ago

Seven U.S. troops were killed by bombs near Baghdad, the military said on Monday, making October the bloodiest month for Americans in Iraq since January.

In the far west, where U.S. marines have been fighting for months to stem a flow of foreign Arab fighters and funds coming through Syria, local doctors and tribal leaders accused American forces of killing some 40 civilians in an air strike.

The military said it knew of no civilian deaths and believed it had killed an al Qaeda leader targeted by precision bombing.

Two roadside bombings near Baghdad on Monday killed six soldiers and the military announced a Marine had been killed by a similar device near Falluja on Sunday.

That made October, which saw Iraqis vote for a constitution and put Saddam Hussein on trial, the worst month for U.S. forces since January, when attacks by Sunni Arab rebels surged before an election that brought Kurds and majority Shi’ites to power.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned at the weekend of a similar increase in bloodshed before another parliamentary vote in December, although officials hope a decision by Sunni leaders not to repeat their January boycott of the voting may deprive the militants of support within Saddam’s once dominant minority.

Militants claiming to speak for some nationalist rebels have said they held fire around the October 15 constitutional referendum to encourage a big Sunni turnout and may do so again, despite disappointment that Sunnis narrowly failed to veto the charter.

However, foreign-influenced Islamist radicals like al Qaeda give no sign of letting up. A suicide bomber lured Shi’ites to their death with a truck laden with dates on Saturday, killing 30 in a small town north of Baghdad, and there are fears of more violence around this week’s end of the holy month of Ramadan.

“LIBERATION CALL”

Launching one of two big Sunni-led blocs expected to figure prominently among dozens of parties on the December 15 ballot, one leader set the tone for his campaign by calling for an end to U.S. occupation and criticizing rivals who returned from exile after Saddam’s fall as beholden to Washington or religion.

“We are … working for the liberation of our country,” Saleh al-Mutlak said, launching his Iraqi Unified Front as a secular pan-Iraqi bloc. “You won’t find anyone in our group who rode into Iraq on an American tank or on a sectarian horse.”

Various secular groups accuse the ruling United Alliance, led by Islamists once exiled in Tehran, of seeking to take Iraq under the influence of fellow Shi’ites in non-Arab Iran.

The order parties appear on the lengthy ballot paper will be drawn by lot on Tuesday. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said that, unlike in January, up to a million Iraqis living abroad may not be able to vote due to the cost and tight schedule of setting up polling stations in foreign cities.

Monday’s roadside bomb that killed four soldiers near Yusufiya, just south of Baghdad, was among the most lethal of recent weeks. The countryside shelters bases for insurgents focused on attacks in Baghdad, say U.S. commanders who voice concern about increasing power and sophistication of such bombs.

Devices capable of penetrating armored vehicles have become more common this year, based on technology U.S. and British officials say has been introduced from Iran.

Two soldiers were killed in a similar attack near Balad, 60 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, and the military said a marine was killed by a bomb near Falluja, to the west, on Sunday.

A week after the U.S. death toll since the 2003 invasion passed the 2,000 mark, it rose to at least 2,025 with the attacks; they brought to 92 the number of Americans to die in October, the highest since 107 died in January.

AIR STRIKE

Near the Syrian border on Monday, U.S. aircraft bombed a house close to Karabila before dawn in what the military said was a precision strike on an al Qaeda leader.

Hospital doctors in nearby Qaim said 40 people were killed and 20 wounded, many of them women and children.

“Civilian deaths cannot be verified and hospital officials frequently make such claims,” U.S. spokesman Colonel David Lapan said. “We believe the targeted terrorist leader was killed but we cannot confirm that.”

U.S. forces in Tal Afar, further north on the border and the site of a fierce battle in September, accused insurgents of holding the local population in a “grip of fear” in a statement detailing what a military spokesman said were rebel atrocities.

Twelve bodies were found shot in the head in a shallow grave along with two who had been beheaded, the military said. A mentally handicapped boy was forced to throw hand grenades at Iraqi troops, and another boy confessed to murder and holding the feet of people while militants cut their heads off.

Before the election, a further hearing is scheduled in the trial of Saddam and seven co-defendants, including his brother Barzan al-Tikriti, on charges of crimes against humanity.

Prime minister Jaafari said on Monday that Barzan would have access to cancer treatment which he had demanded. Jaafari did not say he would be freed as he had requested, however.

(Additional reporting by Ammar al-Alwani in Ramadi and Ahmed Rashid, Hiba Moussa and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad)

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