Hamid Karzai

A rocket attack near the luxury Serena Hotel in Kabul has injured four people, including two members of the Afghan security forces, a spokesman for Afghanistan's health ministry said Saturday. One rocket hit the wall of the five-star hotel in downtown Kabul at 6.15 pm (1345 GMT), Ahmad Farid Raaid, health ministry spokesman, told AFP. Zamarai Bashary, spokesman for the interior ministry, said: "It was a rocket that hit in front of the Rabia Balkhi hospital. We have four wounded, three are civilians an  

A rocket attack near the luxury Serena Hotel in Kabul has wounded four people, including at least one member of the Afghan security forces. One rocket hit the wall of the five-star hotel in downtown Kabul at 6.15pm on Saturday Ahmad Farid Raaid, a spokesman for Afghanistan's health ministry, told AFP. A spokesman for the interior ministry said the rocket also hit the front of Rabia Balkhi hospital.  

A suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded at least 23 others Friday in a busy city square in western Afghanistan, while near Kabul a powerful former warlord narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, officials said. The attacks came a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai took the oath of office for a second term amid escalating violence across the country. Karzai said he has put national reconciliation with Taliban insurgents at the top of his agenda.

These days Taliban are causing high casualties because the foreign forces and Afghan forces have been conducting operations against the insurgency in the region   -Mohammad Faqir Askar

 

Afghan officials say a rocket hit near a luxury hotel in the capital Kabul late Saturday, injuring two people. Earlier, police in northeastern Afghanistan said two back-to-back roadside bombs killed two teenagers and wounded two others. Afghan officials say a rocket hit near a luxury hotel in the capital Kabul late Saturday, injuring four people.

The police have been dispatched to the area to investigate and verify from which side the rocket had been launched   -Zamary Bashary

 

Afghanistan's government would collapse within weeks if NATO troops left the country right away, Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in an interview published Saturday. Miliband, who was in Afghanistan for the inauguration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai last week, said insurgent forces would quickly overrun Afghan troops if the international community pulled out. "If international forces leave, you can choose a time - five minutes, 24 hours or seven days - but the insurgents would overru

Artificial timetables just give succor to your enemy   -David Miliband

 

The US investigators have zeroed in on a Pakistani national, who is suspected to be a key link between LeT operatives David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana about whom India [ Images ] is expected to know in a week whether they were involved in Mumbai [ Images ] attacks. The US also believes some elements in Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence could be linked to Headley, while agencies in India have been suspecting that the two Lashkar-e-Tayiba [ Images ] operatives could have been involved i  

Underpaid, under-equipped and under-trained, Afghanistan's 93,000-member police force is the weak link in an ambitious security strategy to hand over defense of the country to Afghans so American and other foreign troops can go home. A strong, unified national police force has long eluded Afghanistan, a country torn by occupation and warfare for hundreds of years. But with the West now attempting to help turn the country from a failed state into at least a functioning one, the police will play a crucial

We are expected to fight insurgents, not just criminals   -Khan Mohammed Zazai

 

As the Obama administration wrestles over its new Afghanistan strategy, the domestic debate is having far-reaching implications for the United States' ties with its allies in the war. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was in Canada on Friday as part of an effort to strengthen the alliance with a partner considered vital to the war effort. But with the U.S. strategy still undecided, Gates was hardly in a position to ask Canada to reconsider or modify its decision to withdraw its 2,800 troops by 2011.

It is fair to say there is an expectation that all NATO countries will up their game   -Peter MacKay

 

We have a watershed and landmark agreement with the United States on nuclear cooperation. We would like to operationalize it and ensure that the objectives for the nuclear deal are realized in full. My sincere hope is that we can persuade the U.S. administration to be more liberal when it comes to transferring [nuclear] technologies to us.