NATO Attacks Kill 14 Afghan fighters

A series of air strikes launched by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has killed 14 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. NATO attack was launched along with Afghan soldiers As quoted by the Associated Press, Monday, September 13, 2010, attacks came as Nato patrols across the river in the province of Uruzgan.NATO forces then requested air support after receiving small arms fire. NATO to ensure that no civilian casualties.

A number of attacks and clashes in recent improved allied forces to suppress the Taliban fighters.In a separate incident, a rocket fired by Taliban fighters against an army supply base in the Afghan city of Jalalabad, eastern Nangarhar province.A spokesman for local police, Ghafor Khan said the rocket attack was not on target. But it hit a house, until injuring nine civilians, including children.The attacks coincided with rising tensions ahead of parliamentary elections. Taliban try to overthrow the government of the United States and its allies pro in Kabul and expel foreign troops from that country.

Ireland activists groups planing to buy ship for new Gaza aid flotilla

Pro-Palestinian groups in Ireland launched a fundraising drive Monday to buy a ship for a second attempt to breach Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza.The Irish Ship to Gaza campaign aims to send between 30 and 50 Irish people, including public figures, journalists and activists, to join a flotilla taking aid to people in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.”Preparations are well under way internationally for the Second Freedom Flotilla, which is being assembled by the same groups that organized the Freedom Flotilla in late May,” organizers said in a statement.Between 10 and 15 ships are expected to take part, cargo ships as well as passenger vessels.

Israeli commandos killed nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists in a melee after they boarded a vessel in the previous flotilla, which also included Irish activists. Israel and the United Nations are holding separate investigations into the incident.In response to Western criticism, including from its biggest ally the United States, Israel has since eased a land blockade of Gaza where 1.5 million Palestinians live, allowing some civilian goods through, while continuing to enforce its naval embargo of the coastal territory.

Israeli leaders have said their troops, on boarding the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, opened fire in self-defense after being set upon by activists wielding cudgels and knives.Turkey, once Israel’s close strategic ally, called the bloodshed Israeli “state terrorism,” withdrew its ambassador from Israel and canceled joint military exercises.(Reuters)

The attack on Hutu Rwandan Genocide Could Considered

Johannesburg – A draft report from the UN reveal that if the army of Rwanda and its Congolese rebel groups who become allies, considered to have been a massacre of Hutu refugees in Congo Tribe.Events that took place during the 1990s can be regarded as an act of Genocide.Hearing this accusation, the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame threatened to withdraw their forces joined in the UN peacekeeping forces if such allegations are issued.

Approximately one million ethnic Hutus, including residents who survived the events of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 to flee to Congo. But the country’s military continues to hunt them down and slaughtered thousands of them in refugee camps built the United Nations. Thus the Associated Press reported on Friday (27/08/2010).Draft report released by UN Human Rights Council states, systematic attacks that took place at the same time spreading out may be causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Hutus.They were killed by various military units deployed by the Rwanda.(AP)

White House eagerly highlights the departure of U.S. combat troops from Iraq

WASHINGTON As the White House eagerly highlights the departure of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, the small army of American diplomats left behind is embarking on a long and perilous path to keeping the volatile country from slipping back to the brink of civil war.Among the challenges are helping Iraq’s deeply divided politicians form a new government; refereeing long-simmering Arab-Kurd territorial disputes; advising on attracting foreign investment; pushing for improved government services; and fleshing out a blueprint for future U.S.-Iraqi relations.

President Barack Obama also is banking on the diplomats – about 300, protected by as many as 7,000 private security contractors – to assume the duties of the U.S. military. That includes protecting U.S. personnel from attack and managing the training of Iraqi police, starting in October 2011.The Iraq insurgency, which began shortly after U.S. troops toppled Baghdad in April 2003, is why the U.S. only now is entering the post-combat phase of stabilizing Iraq. Originally, the U.S. thought Iraq would be peaceful within months of the invasion, allowing for a short-lived occupation and the relatively quick emergence of a viable government.Although the insurgency has been reduced to what one analyst terms a “lethal nuisance,” it will complicate the State Department’s mission and test Iraq’s security forces.Much is at stake as the department negotiates with the Pentagon over acquiring enough Black Hawk helicopters, bomb-resistant vehicles and other heavy gear to outfit its own protection force in Iraq.

“Regardless of the reasons for going to war, everything now depends on a successful transition to an effective and unified Iraqi government and Iraqi security forces that can bring both security and stability to the average Iraqi,” says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In his view that transition will take five years to 10 years.

The question is whether progress will be interrupted or reversed once American combat power is gone.The U.S. will have 50,000 troops in Iraq when the combat mission officially ends Aug. 31; they are scheduled to draw down to zero by Dec. 31, 2011. Until then, they will advise and train Iraqi security forces, and provide security and transport for the diplomats.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he believes Iraq’s security forces have matured to the point where they will be ready to shoulder enough of the burden to permit the remaining 50,000 U.S. soldiers to go home at the end of next year.”My assessment today is they – they will be,” Odierno said, according to an excerpt of the interview released Saturday by CNN.”We continue to see development in planning, in their ability to conduct operations,” he added. “We continue to see political development, economic development and all of these combined together will start to create an atmosphere that creates better security.”

Once the U.S. troops are gone, the State Department will be responsible for the security of its personnel.Obama administration officials say the diplomats are well prepared for what the State Department expects to be a three to five-year transition to a “normal” U.S.-Iraqi relationship.”We are fully prepared to assume our responsibilities as we move through this transition from a military-led effort to a civilian-led effort,” department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

Iraq watchers have their doubts.Kenneth M. Pollack, a frequent visitor to Iraq as director of Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution, says the administration is in danger of underestimating the difficulty it faces.”One of the biggest mistakes that most Americans are making is assuming that Iraq can’t slide back into civil war. It can,” Pollack said. “This thing can go bad very easily.”Pollack, who does not consider himself a pessimist on Iraq, said the historical record on civil wars around the globe shows that about half repeat themselves.

“So it is a huge mistake to assume it can’t” happen in Iraq, whose civil strife in 2005-07 was so violent that many Americans assumed the war was lost and believed U.S. troops should give up and go home.Pollack considers the State Department ill-suited for its new tasks – starting with the police training mission and including the complex developmental problems such as improving Iraq’s water system.”What the State Department is being asked to do isn’t in their DNA,” Pollack said.The department has been strongly criticized for its past work in Iraqi police training. An October 2007 report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., said the State Department had so badly managed a February 2004 contract for Iraqi police training that the department could not tell what it got for the $1.2 billion it spent.

In May 2004 President George W. Bush put the Pentagon in charge of all security force development.The newly departed U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Christopher Hill, says he sees brighter days ahead for Iraq, but he also laments “woefully low” supplies of electricity and deeply ingrained tensions among the three main competitors for political power: Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.”There is a mountain of mistrust,” Hill said.The diplomats’ postwar task would have been much easier if, as the administration once hoped, Iraq had formed a new government by now, nearly six months after its March 7 national elections.Instead, the political stalemate   with no end in sight – has created another hurdle to the central U.S. goal in Iraq: translating hard-fought security gains into stability.Still, there is optimism in some quarters.

“While there are no guarantees, the prospects for Iraq’s security and stability beyond 2011 look as good or better than they have at any time in the recent past,” John Negroponte, who was U.S. ambassador to Iraq in 2004-05, wrote Thursday in a ForeignPolicy.com blog.Another complication is the shake up of key U.S. players in Baghdad.Odierno leaves Baghdad on Sept. 1 for a new assignment in the U.S., and Gen. David Petraeus, who was Odierno’s boss as head of Central Command, switched last month to take command in Afghanistan. Hill was replaced in Baghdad this past week by James Jeffrey, who was the U.S. ambassador to Turkey.(AP)

Brazilian police arrested 10 heavily armed men and rescued 35 people who had been held hostage for almost two hours at a five-star hotel in one of Rio de Janeiro's

Brazilian police on Saturday arrested 10 heavily armed men and rescued 35 people who had been held hostage for almost two hours at a five-star hotel in one of Rio de Janeiro’s richest neighborhoods.The gunmen, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, were driving in several cars on a scenic road along the ocean when they met with police patrols.

A shootout followed in Rio’s Sao Conrado neighborhood and the hooded suspects escaped into the Intercontinental Hotel, which last year hosted the World Economic Forum on Latin America. A woman bystander was killed and two police officers were hurt in the exchange of gunfire, police said.”I have never seen so many criminals together. All of them were wearing the same outfit, like uniforms, and were on the streets shooting into the open air,” a resident who witnessed the event and asked not to be named told Reuters. “It was a war zone.”TV images showed suspects wearing black bullet-proof vests and hiding behind a garbage truck during the shootout with police, before running into the hotel.

Colonel Lima Castro, a spokesman for Rio’s military police, said the 35 hostages were freed without harm. Police swept the entire hotel and arrested 10 people.Violent crime is a major concern in Rio, where heavily armed drug gangs control its many slums. The sprawling city is Brazil’s biggest tourist destination and will host the 2016 Olympic games, as well as be a venue for the 2014 World Cup.(Reuters)

Rebels killed three personnel of UN peacekeepers from India

Kinshasa  Rebels killed three personnel of UN peacekeepers from India at their camp in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the military said India and the Congo, Wednesday.Besides seven Indian soldiers wounded in attack in Kirumba, the Indian military and local officials accused carried out by the Mai-Mai, a Congolese militia.

“At approximately 1:50 pm local time , under a dark situation, unity Operating Base in Kirumba approached by five civilians,” said the Indian military in a statement.”They asked for assistance in the post, while they’re bericara with guards on duty at the time, a group of about 50-60 pmberontak – possibly from the Mai-mai rebel groups – attacking the base, out of the woods,” the statement said.

The attack lasted about five minutes. Rebels had fled into the woods, in the midst of darkness.”In that incident, three Indian army personnel were killed and seven others injured.General Vainqueur Mayala, commander of military region VIII of the Democratic Republic of Congo says the attack motive is unclear.

“They did not use firearms, but machetes and knives, and they killed three Indian soldiers and three others were seriously wounded,” said the general was told AFP by telephone from Kinshasa.The victims were all serving in the Organization for the Stability in the Democratic Republic of the United Nations (MONUSCO).

MONUSCO is one of institutions and their heightened security so I do not see how the attackers entered the camp were using machetes, “he said and added that he” can not understand “why the attack was carried out.Kirumba located about 140km north of Goma, capital of Nord-Kivu province.

Indian troops shot dead a Nord-Kivu in May this year, and another was killed in a firefight in the province in 2005.Leaders of the city, told the AFP Egide Karafifi that the attackers wore civilian clothes and sang songs Mai-Mai.MONUSCO spokesman, Madodje Maounoubai not be immediately reached to confirm the attack.The mission, which was previously identified natural French acronym MONUC its presence in Congo since the end of 1999 and its new mandate to consolidate peace barlangsung until June 30 next year.(AFP)

57 candidates and Iraqi soldiers were killed and 123 injured after a suicide bomber at army recruitment center in Baghdad

Baghdad At least 57 candidates and Iraqi soldiers were killed and 123 injured after a suicide bomber blew himself up at army recruitment center in Baghdad, Tuesday, two weeks before U.S. combat duty in Iraq ended.The blast, which ravage the ranks recruits, is the one that claimed the most victims of this year and it happens when the unexpected guerrillas also launched a murder of the judges in the Iraqi capital and the restive provinces in northern Iraq.Bloodshed adds to the tension that has got worse after the general elections which did not complete more than five months ago. General elections were not yet produced a new government.

Guerrillas have been targeting Iraqi army and police as they prepared to assume full security responsibilities on 1 September, when the United States end the combat mission 7.5 years.The number of U.S. troops will be reduced to be 50 000 personnel to the mission of training before a full withdrawal is planned for next year.

“We’re waiting in line. Also, there officers and soldiers. Suddenly there was an explosion. Thanksgiving is just my hand injury,” said Aziz Saleh, one of which will be recruited, told Reuters Television, while doctors at al-Karkh hospital care victim injury.As many as 57 people were killed and 123 injured in an attack on an Army base in the field Maidan, the central part of Baghdad, according to information from the media office of the Ministry of Health.

The White House said U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the attack, but U.S. withdrawal timetable has not changed.”Our combat mission ended at the end of the month, but we’re still going to put forces in there that will help support the (Iraqi forces) as needed,” said spokesman Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One.(AFP)

Zimbabwe auctioned 900,000 carats of rough gems Wednesday from a diamond

JOHANNESBURG Zimbabwe auctioned 900,000 carats of rough gems Wednesday from a diamond field where human rights groups say soldiers killed 200 people, raped women and enslaved children.It was the first public sale of diamonds from the notorious Marange field in eastern Zimbabwe since international regulators imposed a ban in November under rules designed to screen out conflict gems.The sale happened to coincide with the “blood diamonds” phase of the war crimes trial of Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president. Taylor’s case and the Zimbabwe sale are unrelated, but both point to the successes and difficulties facing the campaign to regulate the trade in diamonds that has helped finance wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Congo and now Ivory Coast.

The auction in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, went ahead after the gems were certified as conflict-free by Abbey Chikane, a monitor for the Kimberley Process that oversees trade in the diamonds. Chikane had established that soldiers were gone from two fenced-off commercial mines producing the diamonds, and that the mines were operating according to “minimum international standards.”

In the rest of the field, where Zimbabwe’s military still holds sway and abuses reportedly continue, a ban on diamonds remains in place. But there is no guarantee its product won’t infiltrate into the legitimately mined stones.The arrangement so angered American gem trader Martin Rapaport that in February he quit as president of the World Diamond Council. “The tragedy of Zimbabwe is that the Kimberley Process has started legitimizing, legalizing, kosherizing blood diamonds,” he said in a telephone interview from Israel as the auction got under way.

He said it made Kimberley participants “liars who are telling the world that these diamonds are legitimate.”The Kimberley Process was set up in 2002. Its members are 75 diamond-producing and diamond-trading countries, along with industry agencies and civic and human rights bodies such as London-based Global Witness.

Stephane Chardon, chairman of the Kimberley monitoring group, said it deserved credit for the original ban on Marange diamonds and for ensuring that the two fenced-off mines were being properly run.He noted that the Kimberley rules apply only to blood diamonds mined and sold by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflicts aimed at toppling legitimate governments. It has no provision for punishing governments.Chardon said the system has helped. “In quite a few countries it has contributed to changing conflict diamonds into development diamonds, in the sense that the revenues are going to the government and are used for development purposes and not for conflict.”

The Marange field was discovered in 2006 and is believed to be the biggest found in the world since the 19th century. It triggered a chaotic diamond rush until police and then the army moved in.Human Rights Watch says the Zimbabwe government still has not kept its word to withdraw soldiers completely from the Marange fields, and that it found conditions there “quite appalling” as recently as May.

“We found that people were still being forced to mine, to dig for diamonds at gunpoint by the army, by soldiers,” said senior researcher Tiseke Kasambala of the area outside the two fenced off mines. “We found children as young as 11 still working in these mines.”Buyers from Belgium, Russia, India, Israel, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates flew into Harare on private aircraft to inspect the stones and present bids in sealed envelopes. They refused to speak to reporters.

“Buyers were extremely interested and the pricing was satisfactory,” said David Castle, director of Mbada Diamonds and chairman of the South African New Reclamation Group that offered the diamonds for sale.Global Witness campaigner Elly Harrowell said that instead of expelling Zimbabwe from the Kimberley process as recommended last year by Kimberley Process investigators who were sent to Marange, “What we have instead is a weak compromise.”

She said that unless Zimbabwe kept its promise to withdraw all troops and fulfill other promised improvements, the Kimberley Process should “act very, very quickly” to prevent Marange gems from being exported.The compromise was reached after a Zimbabwe court released human rights activist Farai Maguwu, who was jailed for more than a month after publicizing abuses at the diamond fields.

Human rights groups say the deal also helped avert a crisis in the international diamond market, since President Robert Mugabe was threatening to sell stones without certification.Zimbabwe’s mines minister, Obert Mpofu, said Wednesday the country has 4.5 million Marange diamonds in stock, valued at up to $1.9 billion – one third of the national debt of a country whose economy has been ruined by corruption, mismanagement and Mugabe’s campaign against the country’s white-minority farmers.(AP)

Hezbollah militants accuses Israel of Hariri assassination

BEIRUT The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants presented aerial reconnaissance footage Monday that he said implicates Israel in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.But Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who has been in hiding since his Shiite Muslim group battled Israel in a monthlong 2006 war, acknowledged the material was not absolute proof.

“This is evidence, indications … that open new horizons for the investigations,” Nasrallah said at a lengthy press conference in which he spoke to reporters via satellite link.The speech comes as pressure is mounting on Hezbollah over a Netherlands-based tribunal investigating Hariri’s assassination, which is set to issue indictments this year. If Hezbollah is indicted, there are fears it could spark riots between the Sunni supporters of Hariri and Shiite followers of Hezbollah.The two sides have clashed before following political power struggles. In May 2008, Hezbollah gunmen swept through Sunni pro-government neighborhoods of Beirut, raising the threat of a new civil war.

Israel immediately dismissed Hezbollah’s accusations.

“The international community, the Arab world, and most importantly, the people of Lebanon all know that these accusations are simply ridiculous,” a senior Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no government statement was made.Hariri was killed in a massive Valentine’s Day truck bombing in 2005 that many in Lebanon blamed on Syria, which backs Hezbollah. Syria denies any involvement in the assassination.

Hariri, a billionaire businessman credited with rebuilding Lebanon after its 15-year civil war, had been trying to limit Syria’s domination of Lebanon in the months before his assassination.

The killing sparked massive anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon, dubbed the “Cedar Revolution,” which led to Syria’s withdrawal.Nasrallah said the tapes shown Monday were intercepted by Hezbollah between the 1990s and 2005, and showed Israeli reconnaissance footage of areas frequented by Hariri, including where he died. He said this proved Israel was tracking his movements for purposes of assassination.

Asked why he was presenting the material at a press conference as opposed to the tribunal, Nasrallah said: “I do not cooperate with parties that I do not trust.”

The tribunal has not said who will be charged, but Nasrallah said last month he already knows that Hezbollah members will be among them. His July 22 announcement appeared to be an attempt to soften the impact of any charges.He has said the tribunal has no credibility and is simply an “Israeli project,” and that his group will not turn over any of its members for trial.

In response to questions about why Nasrallah chose to offer the material five years after Hariri’s assassination, he said the recent arrests of scores of Lebanese agents who were spying for Israel since last year has yielded information proving Israel’s deep involvement in a number of assassinations in the country.Nasrallah said his group also has just learned of an Israeli spy who had been scouting the area of the assassination just a day before the truck bomb that killed Hariri exploded. The spy, however, fled before authorities could arrest him. (AP)

NBA all-stars joined President Barack Obama on Sunday to entertain wounded troops

WASHINGTON LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and other NBA all-stars joined President Barack Obama on Sunday to entertain wounded troops.The basketball superstars were joined by some retired legends, including Bill Russell and Magic Johnson. College player Maya Moore of the Connecticut Huskies women’s team also played.

The game was played for a group of “wounded warriors” – troops injured in action – and participants in the White House’s mentoring program.The action took place at a gym inside Washington’s Fort McNair, a short drive from the White House. The president was inside the gym for about two hours. (AP)