Friday, 12 September 2008

ex Unocol executive Karzai welcomes 'war on terror' shift
AFGHAN President Hamid Karzai today welcomed a new US "war on terror" focus on Pakistan's border areas as more deadly violence underscored rampant militancy seven years after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Mr Karzai also called for an end to civilian casualties in the fight against extremists after a US strike last month which Afghan and US officials say killed 90 villagers.

As thousands of US troops fell silent to mark 9/11, two Taliban-style suicide attacks struck in the volatile south, together leaving four Afghans dead and a dozen wounded.

The NATO- and US-led force announced meanwhile that three soldiers had been killed in attacks, one a British trooper who died in a blast in the southern province of Helmand yesterday, the Ministry of Defence in London said.

The nationalities of the other two were not announced.

The US-led coalition said separately it had killed "several militants" in a raid on a Taliban commander yesterday although locals said three civilians were among the dead.

Mr Karzai welcomed comments from the US military chief about a change in strategy to fight the growing violence and said he had long called for a shift to target extremists launching attacks from Pakistan's rugged border regions.

Taliban militants fled to Pakistan's tribal regions after the hardline regime was toppled by a US-led invasion in late 2001 for harbouring al-Qaeda.

"Our words have been clear in this regard: a change in strategy is needed, meaning that we must go to places where there is training and hide-out facilities (for terrorists) and jointly we must go there and destroy that," Mr Karzai said.

He spoke after US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael Mullen said he had commissioned "a new, more comprehensive military strategy for the region that covers both sides of that border".

Mr Karzai also paid tribute to the international soldiers in his country to help tackle insurgent violence and expand the Afghan security forces, destroyed in a civil war that preceded the Taliban's 1996-2001 government.

But he said there had been mistakes, notably the number of civilians being killed in military operations.

"We want civilian casualties in Afghanistan not only to reduce but to stop totally," Mr Karzai said.

There were, however, new claims of casualties today with locals saying coalition troops had killed a woman and two of her sons aged 12 and 19 in a raid in the central province of Ghazni yesterday.

The coalition confirmed the operation but said that "several militants" were killed and two arrested.

The Taliban meanwhile claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in the southern city of Kandahar that a government official said killed a boy and an adult male and wounded six more people.

A second suicide attacker blew himself up outside a mosque in the Kash Rod centre in Nimroz province and killed a policeman and a civilian, provincial governor Ghulam Dastagir Azad said. Seven more people were wounded.

US military bases in Kabul and at Bagram, north of the capital, held ceremonies to remember the 3000 people killed on September 11, 2001.

The Taliban used the anniversary to release a statement that said the United States was at the "edge of historical defeat" in Afghanistan.

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