Coalition forces attacked inside Kabul

Our troops are now being attacked inside the capital, which has been the only area the coalition has been able to call their own. Karzai has often been called "The Mayor of Kabul", but his control of that city has been strained recently because his government has not paid its employees for several weeks. The Afghan government is widely ignored by warlords outside of the capital, in a situation parallel to the provincial governments in Iraq, making the Karzai government increasingly irrelevant.

Again, we are seeing the same inverted logic in the Afghan war that has been a mainstay in the Iraq effort: attacks show the enemy is "desperate", increased violence means that peace is "just around the corner", political instability can be overcome with airstrikes and bullets, and we just need more time for the magic to work.

Suicide bomber hits Western troop convoy in Kabul

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of Western troops in the Afghan capital on Saturday and wounded up to four soldiers, a NATO spokesman said.

The attack happened on a road leading east from Kabul which is regularly used by NATO and U.S.-led troops.

Two to four foreign soldiers were taken to hospital after the blast, a spokesman for the NATO-led force said.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan in the past 19 months, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops toppled the Taliban government in 2001.

On Friday night, a rocket landed inside a hospital compound in Kabul but caused no casualties or damage, hospital officials said on Saturday.

Taliban insurgents occasionally fire rockets into Kabul although they rarely cause casualties. Friday's attack hit the Wazir Akbar Khan area of Kabul where many foreign embassies and aid organisations have their offices.

"It was 11 p.m. when a rocket hit inside the Wazir Akbar Khan compound," said a doctor who worked at the Wazir Akbar Khan hospital. "No one was wounded or killed, and the hospital received no damage. It hit a garden inside the hospital."

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Afghan troops killed 19 Taliban insurgents in clashes in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, on Friday, the provincial governor told Reuters on Saturday.

Six more Taliban rebels were killed when they ambushed a police patrol in the southeastern province of Paktika on Friday, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.


This article: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1354972007

Last updated: 25-Aug-07 16:24 BST