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Afghan Taliban threaten to behead US soldiers; govt team attacked

Kabul:  Suspected insurgents fired on an Afghan government delegation on Tuesday investigating the massacre of 16 civilians by a US soldier, officials said, hours after the Taliban threatened to behead American troops to avenge the killings.

Two of President Hamid Karzai's brothers, Shah Wali Karzai and Addul Qayum Karzai, were with senior defence, intelligence and interior ministry officials travelling to the scene of the massacre in Najiban and Alekozai villages, in Kandahar's Panjwai district, when insurgents opened fire.

Karzai's brothers were unharmed in the brief gun battle during meetings at a village mosque, but a soldier and a civilian were wounded. The area is a Taliban stronghold and a supply route.

"The Islamic Emirate once again warns the American animals that the mujahideen will avenge them, and with the help of Allah will kill and behead your sadistic murderous soldiers," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, using the term with which the Islamist group describes itself.

As the first protest broke out in Jalalabad city over the weekend shootings, the Taliban said Afghan government demands for an open trial of the US Army staff sergeant being held for the slayings would not blunt civilian hostility towards Western combat troops.

The unnamed US soldier - said to have only recently arrived in the country - is accused of walking off his base in Kandahar province in the middle of the night and gunning down at least 16 villagers, mostly women and children.

A US official said the accused soldier had suffered a traumatic brain injury while on a previous deployment in Iraq.

The shootings, which came just weeks after deadly protests across the country over the inadvertent burning of Korans by US soldiers, triggered a protest by around 2,000 students in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

The demonstrators chanted "Death to America" and demanded Afghan President Hamid Karzai reject plans to sign a strategic pact with Washington that would allow US advisers and possibly special forces to remain in the country beyond the planned withdrawal in 2014.

US President Barack Obama, speaking after a phone call with Karzai - who is said to be furious over the latest deaths - said the shootings had only increased his determination to get American troops out of Afghanistan.

However, Obama cautioned there should not be a "rush to the exits" for US forces who have been fighting in Afghanistan since late 2001 and that the drawdown set for the end of 2014 should be done in a responsible way.

The soldier, from a conventional unit, was based at a joint U.S.-Afghan base used by elite U.S. troops under a so-called village support programme hailed by NATO as a possible model for U.S. involvement in the country after the 2014 drawdown.

Such bases provide support to local Afghan security units and provide a source of security advice and training, as well as anti-insurgent backup and intelligence.

A spokesman for Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wisa said that tribal elders in the area of the massacre would urge against protests and work to dampen public anger if the investigation process was transparent.

"They are supporting the government and will accept any conclusion by the investigators. Today we have meetings with people in the area and all will become clear," spokesman Ahmad Jawid Faisal said.

NATO officials said it was too early to tell if the US soldier would be tried in the United States or Afghanistan if investigators were to find enough evidence to charge him, but he would be under U.S. laws and procedures under an agreement between US and Afghan officials.

Typically, once the initial investigation is completed, prosecutors decide if they have enough evidence to file charges and then could move to an Article 32 or court martial hearing.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday that the death penalty could be sought in the U.S. military justice system against the soldier, but portrayed the shooting as an isolated event that would not alter withdrawal plans.

While Afghan MPs in parliament called for a trial under Afghan law, Karzai's office was understood to accept that a trial in a U.S. court would be acceptable provided the process was transparent and open to media.

Analysts said the incident would complicate U.S. efforts to reach agreement with the Afghan government on a post-2014 security pact before a May summit in the U.S. city of Chicago on the future size and funding of Afghan security forces.

Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts Network said that despite NATO and White House references to the killings as the work of a "rogue" soldier, other similar events had happened before, including a "kill team" apprehended in Kandahar in 2010.

"In the stress of an environment of escalated violence - by both sides, but particularly after Obama's troop surge in early 2009, it looks as if most soldiers simply see Afghanistan as a whole as 'enemy territory' and every Afghan as a potential terrorist. This can no longer be called 'rogue'," Ruttig said.

NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, Marine General John Allen, has promised a rapid investigation of the massacre, while security was being reviewed at NATO bases across the country.

Copyright@Thompson Reuters 2012

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Afghan delegation attacked by militants at site of US killings

Balandi, Afghanistan:  Taliban militants opened fire on Tuesday on an Afghan government delegation visiting one of the two villages in southern Afghanistan where a US soldier is suspected of killing 16 civilians.

The gunfire killed an Afghan soldier who was providing security for the delegation, said Gen. Abdul Razaq, the police chief for Kandahar province where the visit took place. Another Afghan soldier and a military prosecutor were wounded in the attack, he said.

The attack in Balandi village came as the Taliban vowed to kill and behead those responsible for the 16 Afghan civilians killed on Sunday.

The delegation, which included two of President Hamid Karzai's brothers and other senior officials, was holding a memorial service in a mosque for victims when the shooting started.

One of the president's brothers, Qayum Karzai, said the attack didn't seem serious to him.

"We were giving them our condolences, then we heard two very, very light shots," said Karzai. "Then we assumed that it was the national army that started to fire in the air."

He said the members of the delegation, which also included Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa and Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid, were safe and headed back to Kandahar city.

The US is holding an Army staff sergeant in custody who is suspected of carrying out the killings before dawn on Sunday in two villages close to his base in Panjwai district, considered the birthplace of the Taliban.

Villagers have described him stalking from house to house in the middle of the night, opening fire on sleeping families and then burning some of the bodies of the dead afterward.

Nine of the 16 killed were children, and three were women, according to Karzai.

Hundreds of students in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday shouted angry slogans against the United States and the American soldier accused of carrying out the killings, the first significant protest in response to the tragedy.

The killings have caused outrage in Afghanistan but have not sparked the kind of violent protests seen last month after American soldiers burned Muslim holy books and other Islamic texts.

The more muted response could be a result of Afghans being used to dealing with civilian casualties in over a decade of war. Some have said the slayings in Panjwai were more in keeping with Afghans' experience of deadly night raids and airstrikes by US-led forces than the Quran burnings were.

But the students protesting at a university in Jalalabad city, 80 miles (125 kilometers) east of the capital Kabul, were incensed.

"Death to America!" and "Death to the soldier who killed our civilians!" shouted the crowd.

Some carried a banner that called for a public trial of the soldier, who US officials have identified as a married, 38-year-old father of two who was trained as a sniper and recently suffered a head injury in Iraq.

Other protesters burned an effigy of President Barack Obama.

"The reason we are protesting is because of the killing of innocent children and other civilians by this tyrant US soldier," said Sardar Wali, a university student. "We want the United Nations and the Afghan government to publicly try this guy."

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement sent to reporters on Tuesday that the soldier should be tried as a war criminal and executed by the victims' relatives.

Obama has expressed his shock and sadness and extended his condolences to the families of the victims. But he has also said the horrific episode would not speed up plans to pull out foreign forces, despite increasing opposition at home to the war in Afghanistan.

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Indian fishermen attacked, allegedly by Sri Lankan navy

Chennai:  Five Indian fishermen were attacked in the seas allegedly by Lankan navy  in the Indian water last night.
The Lankan naval personnel yesterday attacked the fishermen with wooden logs, stones and bottles, resulting in bone fracture of a 25-year-old youth and serious injuries to others, they said.
One of the injured fishermen has been admitted to in a hospital in Ramanathapuram. Several other fishermen, whose back were swollen with weals and bruises, were being treated at private hospitals, police said.
The youth said it was a "brutal" attack by the Lankan navalmen who surrounded 25 boats of the fishermen. "They damaged the boats, snapped the fishing nets and lashed out at us with logs and pelted stones," he said.
The Ministry of External Affairs has asked Colombo to take up reports  of attack on Indian fishermen with the concerned Sri Lankan authorities.
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