AF / PAK Update 10June09

From Fox News:

Investigators searched a wrecked luxury hotel in northwestern Pakistan for evidence Wednesday after a brazen suicide bombing killed 11 people, including aid workers, in what the U.N. condemned as a "heinous terrorist attack."

Elsewhere in the volatile region, security forces killed 70 suspected militants in an area close to two major Taliban tribal strongholds, intelligence officials told The Associated Press.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for late Tuesday's bombing of the Peshawar Pearl Continental, but the blast followed Taliban threats to carry out major attacks in large cities to avenge an army offensive against insurgents in the nearby Swat Valley.

The government is trying to build public support for offensives against the Taliban, and reaction was swift with calls for harsh punishment for the attackers.

"This is a war, but the people of this country will not bow to the cowardly acts of terrorists. People are now seeing the real face of those who have been exploiting them in the name of Islam," North West Frontier Province senior minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour told reporters. "We will fight this war till our last breath. They cannot break us. The whole nation is united."

From AJE:

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has ordered a government investigation after US soldiers were accused of exploding a grenade in northeastern Afghanistan that killed two people and wounded more than 50 others.

Karzai’s order on Wednesday came after the US military released a video of Tuesday's explosion in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province, which did not make clear who may have thrown the grenade.

The video shows about a half dozen soldiers working to free a large military vehicle that had run into a small median in the town of Asadabad on Tuesday.

A crowd of several dozen Afghans had gathered to watch the soldiers work, when a bright flash can be seen. The camera zooms out and the Afghans hurriedly flee the crowded marketplace.

Some Afghan witnesses and officials, including Afghanistan's ministry of education, accused a US soldier of throwing the grenade.

US military officials and the ministry of interior said fragments from a Russian-made grenade were found at the site, and blamed someone in the crowd for throwing the munition.

None of the half dozen US soldiers in the video can be seen throwing a grenade.

The US military said the video was taken by a stationary aerial balloon with a camera attached to it.

From Afghan News Network:

New American troops pouring into southern Afghanistan will allow NATO-led forces to drive deeper into the heart of the Taliban insurgency, the Dutch general commanding allied forces in the region said Wednesday.

President Barack Obama has ordered 21,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan and some 10,000 already have been deployed. They aim to pacify the vast region and train local forces so the Afghan government can take control and eventually allow foreign soldiers to return home.

In an upbeat assessment of the coalition campaign, Maj. Gen. Mart de Kruif said the extra troops would strengthen efforts to disrupt the insurgents and combat roadside bombs that are their chief weapon.

The allied forces have been fighting the Taliban for eight years with limited success, and the extra troops are intended to reverse an upswing in insurgency violence.

De Kruif said the addition of troops and vehicles means "we will go into areas we have never been before, disrupting the insurgents' leadership, their logistics and their IEDS" — or roadside bombs that are the Taliban's most deadly weapon, accounting for 70 percent of all coalition casualties in southern Afghanistan.

The NATO-led force in the south is expected to number some 45,000 troops by the time of Afghan elections on Aug. 20, De Kruif said.

God Bless America

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