Kabul (Afghanistan): US and Afghan forces have launched a major operation against al-Qaeda fighters based in mountains bordering Pakistan, the US army said on Thursday after a bomb killed three German police officers near Kabul.
The US and Afghan offensive was in the Tora Bora mountains where al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was once thought to be hiding in a series of cave and tunnel complexes. Bin Laden escaped a 2001 assault on the mountains to capture him.
''US and Afghan forces engaged al-Qaeda and other violent extremist fighters in eastern Afghanistan during a combined arms assault using precision munitions,'' said coalition spokeswoman Captain Vanessa Bowman.
''This region has provided an ideal environment to conceal enemy support bases and training sites, as well as plan and launch attacks aimed at terrorising innocent civilians, both inside and outside the region,'' she said without stating when the operation started or how long it would continue.
News of the offensive came after the three senior German police charged with protecting the country's ambassador were killed and one was wounded by a roadside bomb near the Afghan capital, German and Afghan officials said.
Baryali Parwani, chief of police of the Bagrami district, southeast of Kabul, said the diplomatic convoy was hit by a remote-controlled roadside bomb.
A white four-wheel-drive vehicle was totally destroyed by the blast on a dirt track leading to a NATO and Afghan army training base. German and French troops cordoned off the area.
''Based on what we know so far the officers drove over a bomb on their way to a training session,'' German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a statement. ''The explosion was so strong that it had deadly consequences.''
A fourth policeman was also injured, but his wounds were not life-threatening, Schaeuble said.
Afghanistan is going through its most violent period since US-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban government in late 2001 for failing to surrender al Qaeda leaders behind the September 11 attacks on the United States.
In Kabul, a British security contractor employed by Armor Group was shot dead in Kabul today, the British Foreign Office said. Armor Group is contracted to guard the British embassy and other British staff in Afghanistan.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana denounced the attack on the Germans.
''I condemn in the strongest possible terms this terrorist act that killed three German citizens and left another one injured,'' he said.
The German government is under pressure from the opposition and public opinion to withdraw its 3,200 troops from Afghanistan where more than 20 of them have been killed since 2001.
Elsewhere, Afghan police killed nine insurgents on Wednesday in a gunbattle in Logar province, south of Kabul and one civilian was killed in an explosion in Paktika province in southeastern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said on Thursday.
Comments
0 comment