Afghan policemen inspect the site of a blast where a bomb went off.—AP (File Photo)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: A bomb killed 13 civilians including women and children in southern Afghanistan on Monday as they travelled to attend the funeral of earlier bomb victims, police said.

It was the latest violence since the Taliban launched their annual “spring offensive” on April 27, opening a crucial period for the country as its security forces take the lead in offensives against the insurgents.

“The blast hit a pick-up truck in the Arghistan district of Kandahar province, killing four women, four men and five children,” Abdul Raziq, Kandahar provincial police chief, told AFP.

Raziq said the victims were travelling to the funeral of two people who were killed by a similar blast a few days ago.

“A motorbike earlier hit a roadside bomb that killed two people, and today’s victims were travelling to attend that funeral when unfortunately their vehicle struck another bomb,” he said.

Javed Faisal, Kandahar provincial governor spokesman, confirmed the incident.

“All the victims are civilians,” he said. “The bomb was planted by Taliban insurgents in a district that borders Pakistan and civilians are often the victim of these bombs.” Nine people were injured in the blast, some of them suffering life-threatening wounds, officials said.

The Taliban, who are fighting to oust the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, deny deliberately targeting civilians.

No large-scale attacks have been launched since the offensive was announced. But five US soldiers died in a Taliban bomb blast also in Kandahar and another bomb killed eight Afghan police in Logar province.

All Nato combat missions will finish by the end of next year and the 100,000 foreign troops deployed across Afghanistan have already begun to withdraw from the battlefield.

More than a decade after the Taliban government was toppled in 2001, Afghanistan remains in the grip of a violent insurgency, with militants launching daily strikes on government officials, police and international and Afghan soldiers.

As Afghanistan’s inexperienced security forces take over responsibility for fighting the Taliban, fears are growing that the country could tip into civil war after Nato military operations cease.

The “residual” US force, ranging from about 2,500 to 12,000 troops, is likely to stay in Afghanistan to focus on Al-Qaeda militants and further training of the national police and army.

Also on Monday, Taliban leaders pledged to release the final four Turkish engineers held hostage since their helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan last month.

Four other Turkish engineers aboard the helicopter were freed on Sunday.

-File Photo

PESHAWAR: The law enforcement agencies foiled a sabotage bid in Khyber Agency as a roadside IED planted to target Nato containers was defused, while in a seperate incident the bomb disposal unit defused bomb near the house of a tribal areas candidate in Peshawar.

The political administration officials say that the bomb planted along Pak-Afghan Highway near Jamrud was defused and was targeting Nato supplies.

The bomb disposal expert official Abdul Haq cofirmed that his unit defused a bomb near the house of an independent Candidate Nosahd from Bajaur Agency in Bashiraabd area on main Pajagai road.

The bomb was locally made and weighed about  two and a half kg.

The clash was sparked over construction at the 1893 British mandated Durand Line which is recognised by Pakistan, but not by Afghanistan. -File Photo

ISLAMABAD: An Afghan border policeman was killed and two Pakistani soldiers were wounded in an exchange of fire along the Pak-Afghan border late on Wednesday, officials from both countries said.

A senior Afghan official said hundreds of additional Afghan troops were sent to a disputed border gate after the exchange of fire, which lasted for more than two hours.

An Afghan official who declined to be named said that one Afghan was killed in several hours of artillery exchanges.

Pakistani authorities accused the Afghan National Army (ANA) of firing on one of its border checkposts, injuring at least two security personnel.

A senior Pakistan security official in the country’s northwest said ANA troops started firing at 10:00 pm local time, which triggered an exchange of fire that lasted for two hours on the Pakistan-Afghan border in the Mohmand tribal district.

“It was continuous fire on one of our checkpost that forced our troops to retaliate,” the official told AFP.

“ANA was firing with small and heavy weapons. At least two of our security personnel were injured. We will raise this issue on the proper forum,” the official said.

An administrative official in the Mohmand district along the Afghan border confirmed the exchange of fire and told AFP five ambulances had been sent to the area.

It is the latest incident in a series of cross-border attacks, which Afghan and Pakistan authorities have traded blame for initiating.

Afghan officials say Pakistan has a long history of supporting Afghanistan’s Taliban and other insurgent factions.

Pakistan has in turn accused Afghanistan of giving safe haven to militants on the Afghan side of the border.

The latest tensions are focused on Pakistan’s building of a military gate which Afghan officials claim is inside Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered his top officials to take immediate action to remove the gate and other “Pakistani military installations near the Durand Line”.

The Durand Line is the 1893 British-mandated border between the two countries. It is recognised by Pakistan, but not by Afghanistan.

Afghanistan maintains that activity by either side along the Durand Line must be approved by both countries.

-File Photo

KABUL: Seven crew members of a US-run cargo plane were killed on Monday when their plane crashed shortly after take off from Bagram air base near the Afghan capital Kabul, the cargo operator told Reuters.

The Taliban in a statement claimed responsibility for the crash, but Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said there were no reports of insurgent activity in or around the base, which is one of the largest in the country and located about 40 km (25 miles) north of Kabul.

“We did lose all seven crew members,” a spokeswoman for National Air Cargo told Reuters by telephone from Florida, where the company is located. The nationalities of the crew members were not immediately clear.

The district governor for Bagram, Abdul Shukor, described the plane as having reached an altitude of about 400 m (1312 feet) before suddenly “falling out of the sky”, he said, citing witness accounts.

The crash came two days after four US service members were killed when their surveillance aircraft in southern Afghanistan crashed due to bad weather.

Taliban Militants. —AP File Photo

KABUL: A remote-controlled roadside bomb killed three police officers in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, an attack the Taliban claimed as the opening round of their spring offensive.

The bomb exploded in Ghazni province beneath a police convoy that was traveling to the district of Zana Khan to take part in a military operation against insurgents, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, the province’s deputy governor, told The Associated Press.

He said the blast destroyed the vehicle carrying Col Mohammad Hussain, the deputy provincial police chief, killing him and two other officers.

Ahmadi said two officers also were wounded in the insurgent operation, adding that it clearly targeted Hussain.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility in an email sent to the media. He called the bombing the first attack in the spring offensive that Taliban’s leadership said it was starting Sunday.

This year’s offensive is named after Khalid ibn al-Walid, a companion of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad (PBUHU) who became a legendary Muslim military commander known as the ”Drawn Sword of God.”

The insurgents said their forces planned to infiltrate enemy ranks to conduct so-called insider attacks and target military and diplomatic sites with suicide bombers.

Insurgents have escalated attacks recently in a bid to gain power and influence ahead of next year’s presidential election and the planned withdrawal of most US and other foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

US-backed efforts to try to reconcile the Islamic militant movement with the Afghan government are gaining little traction.

April already has been the deadliest month this year for attacks across the country, where Afghan security forces are increasingly taking the lead on the battlefield in the war that has lasted more than 11 years.

On Saturday, a Nato plane crashed in southern Afghanistan, killing four international troops.

The alliance said initial reports indicated no enemy activity in the area where the plane went down.

Coalition personnel secured the site and were investigating the cause of the crash.

Nato didn’t identify the province where the crash occurred, but Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar, deputy governor of the southern province of Zabul, said an aircraft belonging to foreign forces crashed there on Saturday afternoon.

Nato declined on Sunday to provide any more information about the crash, including the type of aircraft involved, as the investigation continues.

Also on Sunday, the US-led international military coalition said Afghan and foreign forces arrested six insurgents on Saturday, three in Helmand province, one in Baghlan province and two in Kandahar province.

The report said the two taken into custody in Kandahar city included a local Taliban leader who allegedly had coordinated assassinations, sniper ambushes and other attacks there against coalition and Afghan forces.

There are about 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan, including 66,000 Americans. A top priority of the US force, which is slated to drop to about 32,000 by February 2014, is boosting the strength and confidence of Afghan forces.

Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen gives a press conference during a Nato Foreign Affairs ministers meeting at the Nato headquarters in Brussels on April 23, 2013. -AFP Photo

BRUSSELS: Pakistan must play a positive role in bringing stability to Afghanistan as foreign troops prepare to leave in 2014, the head of Nato said on Tuesday, before a US-chaired meeting that will try to ease friction between often feuding neighbours.

US Secretary of State John Kerry will host talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and senior Pakistan officials in Brussels on Wednesday, with the aim of calming tension over border disputes and the stalled peace process.

“If we are to ensure long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan we also need a positive engagement of Afghanistan’s neighbours, including Pakistan,” Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters as alliance foreign ministers met in Brussels to discuss Nato’s mission in Afghanistan.

Wednesday’s US-chaired meeting is part of a series of on-off discussions between Afghanistan and Pakistan at the behest of the United States. Rasmussen said he would meet Karzai later on Tuesday.

Afghanistan has grown increasingly frustrated with Pakistan over efforts to pursue a peace process involving the Taliban, suggesting that Islamabad is intent on keep Afghanistan unstable until after foreign combat forces have left at the end of 2014.

US officials hope that Kerry, who has a good relationship with Karzai, can bring the parties back to the negotiating table and make constructive progress on an issue that has long-term security implications for Washington.

Kerry said on Monday the aim of the meeting would be to “try to talk about how we can advance this process in the simplest, most cooperative and most cogent way, so that we wind up with both Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s interests being satisfied, but, most importantly, with a stable and peaceful Afghanistan.”

TENSION

The talks follow weeks of tension with Pakistan over their 2,600 km (1,600 mile) border and stalled peace efforts.

Although there have been several meetings in Western capitals over the past few months in which representatives of the Taliban have met Afghan peace negotiators, there have been no signs of a breakthrough.

Kabul accuses Pakistan of harbouring the Taliban leadership in the city of Quetta and using militants as proxies to counter the influence of India in Afghanistan.

As well as Karzai and Kerry, Wednesday’s meeting will include Afghanistan’s defence minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, and Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Jalil Jilani, the US official said.

Nato-led forces are expected to cede the lead role for security in Afghanistan this spring to Afghan soldiers, 12 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban government harbouring Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on US cities.

Most foreign combat forces are due to pull out by the end of 2014, leaving a smaller Nato-led training mission behind and a US force to fight militants.

The White House has yet to decide how many US troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014 and this could be a factor influencing both Taliban and Pakistani strategy.

Much depends on progress in negotiations with Karzai on a Bilateral Security Agreement to define the future legal status of US forces.

Nato defence ministers meeting in Brussels on Feb. 22 discussed keeping a combined Nato force of between 8,000 and 12,000 troops. That compares to combined Nato forces of about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan now.

General James Mattis, the head of the US military’s Central Command, said in March he had recommended keeping 13,600 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014.

Afghan Talibans—File Photo.

KABUL: The Taliban may free a group of mainly Turkish hostages captured when their helicopter made an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area of eastern Afghanistan as early as Tuesday night, a provincial official said.

Negotiations between village leaders and the Taliban were underway, and that was leading to hopes they could be freed within hours, a spokesman for the governor of Logar province told Reuters.

“Tribal elders are playing an important role in this incident – they have already talked with the Taliban and we hope the hostages could be freed this evening,” Din Mohammad Darwish said.

The eight Turkish engineers, an Afghan and two pilots from Russia and Kyrgyzstan were onboard a Russian Mi-8 helicopter when it made a “hard landing” in a remote part of Logar province due to bad weather on Sunday afternoon.

They were taken captive by the insurgency, which controls the area, according to officials and a Taliban spokesman.

A group of police were sent to Azra district to investigate on Monday but were fired upon by unknown men and had to leave, Rais Khan Sadiq, the deputy head of Logar police, said, adding that there is no Nato or Afghan army presence in the district.

Since being captured the eleven had been moved from Logar’s conflict-riven Azra district to Hesarak district in neighbouring Nangarhar province, Sadiq said.

No operation to rescue the hostages was being planned while the village elders negotiated with the Taliban, Sadiq said.

“We want to solve this problem with mediation of local elders. If we don’t reach any conclusion then we will plan a military operation,” he said.

He also denied a Taliban statement that the helicopter had been set fire by the insurgents, saying it had been seen by police and it was still intact.

The engineers from a Turkish construction company were returning to Kabul from the eastern border province of Khost, when the helicopter, owned by air charter company Khorasan Cargo Airlines, was forced to land.

Both the Russian and Turkish foreign ministries have confirmed they had citizens aboard the helicopter.

Helicopter crashes and “hard landings” happen relatively frequently in mountainous Afghanistan.

In August 2011, 30 U.S. special forces soldiers, seven Afghans and an interpreter were killed when a Chinook transport helicopter was shot down, the deadliest single incident for foreign troops in more than a decade of war.

Khorasan flies Russian Mi-8 and Mi-17 helicopters as well as fixed-wing aircraft in Afghanistan. They offer troops and cargo transportation as well as medivac and civilian transportation services.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai.—AP Photo

KABUL: Both Taliban insurgents and the US military were to blame for an airstrike a week ago that killed 17 people, including a dozen children, during a fierce battle in eastern Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday.    

Karzai made his comments after an Afghan investigation into the April 6 attack raised the civilian death toll from 11 to 17, including 12 children, four women and one innocent man. An American civilian adviser was also killed during the fighting.

The Afghan report says the US strike occurred after the Afghan intelligence service came under attack by militants during an operation to arrest two insurgent commanders in the Shigal district of Kunar province. The area is a major infiltration route for insurgents from sanctuaries in northwestern Pakistan to Afghanistan.

The US-led coalition has confirmed that it launched airstrikes in Kunar province that day but it has not confirmed civilian casualties, saying the investigation is ongoing.

Afghan forces came under fire with heavy and light weapons as they were about to leave the area. It was in that fighting that the American was killed, causing the Americans to call for air support to move the body from the area at the same time houses believed to be containing suspected insurgents were bombarded for hours from the air, according to the report.

It said most of the houses were made of wood and mud and collapsed under the shock of the airstrikes, causing the deaths.

The death of Afghan civilians caught in crossfire has been a major point of contention between international forces and the Afghan government. Earlier this year, Karzai banned his troops from requesting coalition airstrikes following another deadly airstrike in Kunar.

While he said that airstrikes on residential areas were unacceptable, he also strongly condemned insurgents for taking cover in civilian houses during the battle.

Karzai also ordered government officials to offer immediate help to the families who were harmed in the attack, the statement said, without elaborating.

The investigation was carried out by a government delegation sent from Kabul that worked with 75 tribal elders in the area.

Afghan forces have been increasingly taking the lead in combat operations as international forces move to complete their withdrawal by the end of 2014.

But US and other foreign troops still participate and provide air support as they try to clear areas of insurgents and prepare the Afghans to take control.

In other violence, Taliban militants fired rockets at the coalition-controlled section of the airport Saturday in Jalalabad, 125 kilometers  east of Kabul, damaging a helicopter.

Coalition spokesman Maj Adam Wojack confirmed in an email that the air base came under fire by rockets or mortar shells and said one civilian helicopter was damaged. No coalition aircraft were damaged and no casualties were reported, he added.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said militants fired three rockets at the air base ”and reports show one American helicopter was destroyed and other damage was caused.”

Ummar Zawaq, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand, says a roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded two others in the Marjah district, on Thursday. — File Photo

KABUL: Afghan officials say two separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan have killed four people, including a district police chief.  

A spokesman for the provincial governor in southern Uruzgan province, Abdullah Himmat, says a bomb killed the police chief of the Chora district and two of his bodyguards while they were on patrol early Thursday.

Ummar Zawaq, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand, says a roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded two others in the Marjah district, also on Thursday.

Violence has been escalating around Afghanistan in recent weeks as the spring fighting season has started. Insurgent attacks usually drop off during the country’s harsh winter weather.

File photo shows a Nato soldiers patrolling in Afghanistan. AFP/File Photo

ANDAHAR, Afghanistan: Six Nato personnel including a female US diplomat were killed on Saturday in two separate attacks in Afghanistan, officials said, in the deadliest day for foreign forces this year.

In the southern province of Zabul, a Taliban car bomb struck a Nato convoy killing three troops and two civilian workers, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

According to a US security source the three soldiers were American and one of the civilian workers was from the US.

An ISAF spokesman in Kabul confirmed the explosion was a car bomb targeting a military patrol, adding that there were also Afghan civilian casualties.

In addition, an American citizen died in “an insurgent attack” in eastern Afghanistan, a statement from US-forces Afghanistan said without giving any details.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said that one of the dead in the Zabul attack was a female diplomat whom he had met during a visit to Kabul last week.

Kerry said that the American officials and their Afghan colleagues had been travelling to donate books to students at a school in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province, when they were killed in the “despicable attack”.

Paying tribute to the unnamed diplomat, he described her as “smart, capable, eager to serve and deeply committed to our country and the difference she was making for the Afghan people”.

The Zabul attack left four State Department staffers injured, one critically, according to Kerry.

Ashraf Naseri, the provincial governor of Zabul, told AFP he was on his way to attend an official function in Qalat when he heard the blast.

“One doctor and one civilian were killed and two of my body guards have been injured,” he said.

The strikes came as the top US military officer General Martin Dempsey arrived in the country on an unannounced visit and raised troubling questions about the Taliban’s strength ahead of the coalition’s withdrawal in 2014.

American and Romanian troops are based in the province, according to the ISAF website, but the force did not disclose the victims’ nationalities in line with its policy.

“An explosive-packed car went off this morning in Qalat city as a Nato convoy was passing. We heard it has caused heavy casualties,” another provincial official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Saturday is the deadliest day for the coalition since July 8th, 2012, when two separate attacks killed seven soldiers, also in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Taliban insurgents, who have been waging a tough insurgency since the toppling of their regime in 2001, claimed credit for the deadly strike on their website, adding it happened near a newly constructed hospital.

The insurgents, who usually exaggerate the number of victims they kill, said, “Thirteen invaders were killed and nine others wounded whereas one guard of the governor was also killed with two others suffering injuries.” The attack, which coincides with the start of the fighting season for the Taliban, comes as US-led coalition forces are winding down their operations ahead of a scheduled full withdrawal of 100,000 remaining troops in 2014.

General Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in the country on Saturday to assess the level of training the US will need to provide Afghan forces following the withdrawal.

Last August, insurgents’ rockets hit General Dempsey’s plane as it was parked at the Bagram air field and wounded two maintenance crew, according to officials. Dempsey flew out of the country unharmed using another plane.

In another show of strength, Taliban gunmen Thursday killed 46 people at an Afghan court complex in Western Afghanistan in a bid to free insurgents standing trial.

That attack in Farah, a province that borders Iran, was the deadliest for more than a year in Afghanistan.