Massive manhunt for escaped prisoners in Afghanistan
US, Afghan soldiers search for escapees, while violence in the country increases.
US-led troops are
searching for four "dangerous enemy combatants" who escaped from the main US base in Afghanistan, reports
BBC.
The US military said this is the first time prisoners have escaped from the Bagram air base and that the escapees were militants from Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya.
The US military says it will investigate the escape, which
Reuters calls a "
major embarrassment."
This is the second major US-led manhunt in Afghanistan in the past week.
For two weeks after a US special forces helicopter carrying 16 men was shot down killing all on board – the worst US combat losses in Afghanistan since 2001 – the US continued to search for the men, reports
The Sunday Times.
That search ended Monday when the US military
found the body of a missing commando. The military said "all indications are that he died in fighting, despite a claim by Mullah Latif Hakimi, a purported Taliban spokesman, that he was captured alive and beheaded," reports
The Associated Press.
The Sunday Times reports that the special forces helicopter may have faced intense fire because they "
got too close to bin Laden."
According to former special forces officers and other military sources, the four-man Seal strike team may have come too close to one of the US-led coalition's highest-priority targets - perhaps Mullah Muhammad Omar, the former Taliban leader, or even Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda. Other military sources suggested the target was a regional Taliban commander suspected of links with Al Qaeda.
Violence in Afghanistan has surged in the past few months as militants have stepped up efforts to destabilize the government before the country's first parliamentary election in September.
The number of incidents has increased in the past week alone.
For the first time in two months, Kabul came under
rocket attack Sunday when two rockets slammed into an upscale area of the capital.
Also, militants allied to the Taliban
beheaded six Afghan policemen captured in an ambush near the Pakistan border, reports
The Financial Times.
According to the
Financial Times, "Afghan officials said the militants who carried out Friday's ambush crossed the Pakistan border into Helmand's Dehshu district and fled back over the frontier."
Anger about Pakistan's role as a haven for Taliban militants continues to fray relations between Kabul and Islamabad, despite two recent telephone calls in which General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, assured his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, of his commitment to prevent cross-border attacks. In the past few days, both Afghan and Pakistani officials have publicly stated that bin Laden and former Taliban leader Mullah Omar are not in their respective countries. The officials have studiously stopped short of actually stating that they believe bin Laden and Omar are in the other country, but the implications are clear.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that bin Laden is
not in Afghanistan. His comment came three days after Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said bin Laden is not in Pakistan, but could be in southeastern Afghanistan.
The US announced Monday
it will send 700 more troops to Afghanistan within weeks.
Also...
•
Bring the troops home? (
The Weekly Standard)
•
Blast in Lebanon wounds deputy Prime Minister (
The New York Times)
•
US Seals 'got too close to bin Laden' (
The Australian)
•
Van Gogh suspect confesses guilt (
BBC)
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