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Taliban fighters step up attacks on NATO forces

By TIMES WIRES
Published February 11, 2007

Taliban insurgents have increased attacks in southern Afghanistan in recent days, killing four Afghan police officers in an ambush Friday night and aiming at NATO troops with the second suicide bombing in a week in what seems to be the opening of the fighting season, officials said Saturday. The suicide bomber smashed his car into a NATO military convoy north of Kandahar on Saturday morning, killing himself but not hurting anyone else, said the provincial police chief, Asmatullah Alizay. Another bomber attacked a military convoy in the same place on Feb. 4. Taliban insurgents have also appeared again in the troubled southern district of Panjwai, ambushing a police patrol on Friday night, killing four police officers and wounding two more. NATO troops mounted two heavy combat operations last year to drive insurgents from the area.

Five people die in mortar attacks

Mortar attacks in a residential area and on a hotel in the Somali capital killed five people and injured 10 on Saturday, witnesses said, a day after a previously unknown pro-Islamist group warned it would step up violence. Mogadishu has seen increasing violence over the past month, after government troops backed by Ethiopian forces ousted the Islamic movement that controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia. A mortar blast at a homeless camp killed a 13-year-old girl and wounded two people, said Shamsa Hadi Abdi Wali, a nurse at nearby Banadir Hospital who went to the camp to offer help. Mogadishu's airport and a hotel where the transitional government was holding a weeklong meeting to discuss reconciliation in the capital also came under mortar attack.

10 killed in fire at deportation center

A fire at a detention center killed 10 people and injured 17 others, mostly Chinese, who were waiting deportation for illegal entry to the country, a fire department official said today. Nine Chinese and one Uzbek were killed in the predawn fire at the detention center in Yeosu, about 280 miles south of Seoul, officials said. The 17 injured were mostly Chinese, he said. The cause of the fire, which started on the third floor of the four-story building, was not immediately known, police said.

2 Italian women killed in attack

Three Italian women were brutally attacked while vacationing off the coast of West Africa, dragged into the woods, pelted with stones and left for dead at the bottom of a hole, the sole survivor said Saturday. The bodies of two of the women were found near a beach Friday in the Cape Verde islands, police said. Preliminary autopsy results found the victims, 28 and 33, died of head injuries, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported. Police Chief Oscar Tavares said three local men had been arrested and would soon appear in court. The survivor, who according to Italian news reports is 17 years old, recounted how she and the two other women had been invited to dinner by one of their attackers - a man who reportedly had a previous relationship with one of the victims. She said the attackers sprayed the women with something and immobilized them before taking them to a wooded area.

[Last modified February 11, 2007, 01:25:06]