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U.N. says Afghan violence up 30 percent
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| LatinLover |
KABUL, Afghanistan - Violence in Afghanistan has surged nearly 30 percent this year and suicide bombings are inflicting a high toll on civilians, a new United Nations report says.
The report said Afghanistan is averaging 550 violent incidents a month, up from an average of 425 last year. It said three-fourths of suicide bombings are targeting international and Afghan security forces, but suicide bombers also killed 143 civilians through August.
"Suicide attacks have been accompanied by attacks against students and schools, assassinations of officials, elders and mullahs, and the targeting of police in a deliberate and calculated effort to impede the establishment of legitimate government institutions," according to the report, which was released in New York last week.
A suicide attack Tuesday on a police bus in western Kabul killed 13 officers and civilians, including a woman and her two children who boarded the vehicle seconds before the explosion, the Afghan government reported. It was the second bombing of a bus in the capital in four days.
The U.N. report didn't give any other violence-related numbers.
An Associated Press count of insurgency-related deaths, meanwhile, reached 5,086 in the first nine months of this year. AP counted 4,019 deaths in 2006, based on violent incidents reported by Western and Afghan officials. That was the first year AP compiled such figures.
The AP tally for this year includes more than 3,500 militants killed and more than 650 civilians dead from either insurgent violence or U.S. or NATO attacks.
Almost 180 international soldiers have been killed. That includes 85 U.S. military personnel, nearing the total of 98 American deaths reported by the Pentagon for all of 2006.
Insurgents have staged a record number of suicide attacks this year — more than 100, including the two bus bombings in Kabul since Saturday that killed 43 people between them.
Four children were among the 13 people killed in Tuesday's suicide attack by a man wearing a pakul — an Afghan hat commonly seen in the country's north — and a shawl around the upper half of his body called a chador, said Amin Gul, who owns a metalworking shop next to the blast site.
"When the bus came, an old man got on, then a woman with two children, then the guy wearing the chador entered, and then a big boom," said Gul, who witnessed the attack.
The seats in the front of the bus were covered in blood and small body parts, and workers washed blood from nearby trees after the attack. Ten people were wounded in the bombing, Health Minister Mohammad Amin Fatemi said.
Ahmad Saqi, a 20-year-old mechanic, said he helped put seven people in vehicles for runs to the hospital, and that several of the wounded had no legs.
"One woman was holding a baby in her arms, and they were both killed," Saqi said. "Half of the woman's face was blown off."
The blast killed eight police officers, the mother, her baby and another child, as well as two unaccompanied children who had been heading to a special school for handicapped students, Fatemi said. The children ranged in age from 2 to 8.
"The woman's husband is working at the Health Ministry. How do we tell the father his wife and two kids are dead?" asked Fatemi. "This attack goes against all of Islam. There is no reason to blow up Muslims, especially during the holy month of Ramadan. My message to these people: Please stop killing Muslims."
Tuesday's explosion is the third attack in four months against police or army buses in Kabul.
On Saturday, a suicide bomber wearing an army uniform blew himself up in an army bus, killing 30 people. In June, a bomb ripped through a bus carrying police instructors in Kabul, killing 35 people in the deadliest insurgent attack since the 2001 invasion.
A coalition soldier was killed by gunfire Tuesday morning while conducting combat operations in the northeastern province of Kunar. Three other soldiers were wounded, the coalition said in a statement. The nationalities of the soldiers weren't provided, but most soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are American.
Militants in Kunar attacked a border security post, killing three police, said Zargun Shah Khaliqyar, a spokesman for the provincial governor. It was not clear if the two incidents in Kunar were related.
Canadian troops in Kandahar shot and killed a 35-year-old man and wounded a child in what NATO's International Security Assistance Force called an "accidental discharge" by a weapons system.
The Afghan Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said Afghan and coalition soldiers battled insurgents in Uruzgan province on Sunday, killing 26 of the militants. There was no way to independently verify the claim. |
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| LatinLover |
| quote: | Originally posted by EvilTree
source? |
I apologize for the inconvenience
Source |
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| Groundhog Boy |
| Isn't it nice that we had to pull our troops to send to Iraq before this job was finished. And to think, this war was actually justified. |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
Isn't it nice that we had to pull our troops to send to Iraq before this job was finished. And to think, this war was actually justified. |
It's a travesty on so many levels. I still don't understand how it happened - there was such fervor to declare Afghanistan over and done with, on to the next target, that nobody even paused to give thought over whether or not the next target was even real. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
Isn't it nice that we had to pull our troops to send to Iraq before this job was finished. And to think, this war was actually justified. |
actually there are more NATO and Allied troops there and have been there than there ever were original US troops so you're wrong in that respect.
this is specific evidence that the Taliqueers have had to change their tactics in the last year.
they can't stand up and fight a normal battle against the NATO and US forces anymore. they last time they made a real effort to fight was right before spring and we had anticipated that and took the necessary actions.
they now have taken a different approach similar to the Iraq insurgency whereby they try and ferment chaos using civilian cover to inflict civilian and military casualties.
it has no real tactical goal other than to terrorize and strategically, by nature, has a limited lifespan.
fortunately Afghanistan is not rife with sectarian divides like Iraq with large multicultural and segregated areas or they would be more successful.
you can't really stop someone from blowing themselves up. it's a desperate tactic that unfortunately has devastating effect, but this, like all of their tactics is illegitimate and immoral in the eyes of the populus and must play itself out among them like it has in Iraq. |
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| DJ Shibby |
:(
Just let them be, all they want to do is farm opium. :eyes: :haha: |
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| Groundhog Boy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
actually there are more NATO and Allied troops there and have been there than there ever were original US troops so you're wrong in that respect.
this is specific evidence that the Taliqueers have had to change their tactics in the last year.
they can't stand up and fight a normal battle against the NATO and US forces anymore. they last time they made a real effort to fight was right before spring and we had anticipated that and took the necessary actions.
they now have taken a different approach similar to the Iraq insurgency whereby they try and ferment chaos using civilian cover to inflict civilian and military casualties.
it has no real tactical goal other than to terrorize and strategically, by nature, has a limited lifespan.
fortunately Afghanistan is not rife with sectarian divides like Iraq with large multicultural and segregated areas or they would be more successful.
you can't really stop someone from blowing themselves up. it's a desperate tactic that unfortunately has devastating effect, but this, like all of their tactics is illegitimate and immoral in the eyes of the populus and must play itself out among them like it has in Iraq. |
I'd honestly have expected you to realize that it takes more troops to occupy and stabilize than it does to destroy and overthrow. The point is that we don't have the troops to send there if we wanted to, unless we take them from Iraq. |
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| Krypton |
| quote: | Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
I'd honestly have expected you to realize that it takes more troops to occupy and stabilize than it does to destroy and overthrow. The point is that we don't have the troops to send there if we wanted to, unless we take them from Iraq. |
I've got this breaks track called, "We want your soul", forgot who it was by, but it says that exact same thing in ur sig. With the a chorus of zombie-like voices, "WE WANT YOUR SOUL". |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
I've got this breaks track called, "We want your soul", forgot who it was by, |
Adam Freeland. lol like it says in his sig. |
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| Groundhog Boy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
Adam Freeland. lol like it says in his sig. |
:haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
:haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: |
:toocool:
Was his GU album any good? I never actually heard it. |
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