Afghan suicide attack 'kills 11'

31 July 2011 Last updated at 08:40 GMT The attack targeted the gate of the police headquarters in Lashkar Gah

Ten Afghan policemen and a child have been killed in a suicide attack in the southern Afghan city of Lashkar Gah, officials say.

The attacker targeted the gate of the police headquarters in the city, the capital of Helmand province.

The Taliban said it had carried out the attack, which also wounded 12 people.

Responsibility for Lashkar Gah was recently handed to Afghan forces as part of a plan to return all security to local forces by the end of 2014.

High-profile raids

The attack reportedly targeted a joint Afghan police and army patrol at the compound.

Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor, said that in addition to those killed nine policemen and three civilians were injured.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told Agence France-Presse news agency the group had carried out the attack.

Helmand remains a flashpoint of the Taliban insurgency and has cost the lives of more foreign troops than any other province.

Lashkar Gah is one of seven initial areas for which security has been handed to Afghan forces as part of the gradual transition of control from the Nato-led Isaf.

Sunday's attack follows a series of high-profile Taliban raids.

Last week an attack by insurgents in the southern Afghan town of Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan province left at least 22 people dead, including BBC reporter Ahmed Omed Khpulwak.

On 27 July, the mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haidar Hameedi, was killed in a suicide attack.

Two weeks earlier, President Hamid Karzai's influential half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, was killed in the same city.

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Siachen fire kills India officers

22 July 2011 Last updated at 06:36 GMT Siachen is regarded as the world's highest battlefield Two Indian army officers burned to death when their shelter caught fire in the disputed Siachen glacier area of the Himalayas, the army told the BBC.

Two soldiers were injured when they tried to rescue the officers on Thursday night, an army spokesman said.

An inquiry has been ordered into how the fire started, he added.

Siachen borders the Pakistani- and Indian-administered portions of disputed Kashmir and is regarded as the world's highest battlefield.

India believes that the glacier is of vital, strategic and diplomatic value.

The two countries agreed a ceasefire deal over the Siachen glacier in 2003 but thousands of troops are deployed in the region.

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Afghan blast kills five civilians

15 July 2011 Last updated at 09:59 GMT A roadside bomb has killed five civilians in southern Afghanistan, government officials have said.

Those killed include two children. All the victims were passengers in a minivan.

The attack took place in Sangin district in Helmand province.

It is not known who carried out the attack, but the area on Pakistan's border is a stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.

Helmand provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi told the AFP news agency that the minivan "struck a Taliban-planted mine".

Correspondents say says roads are increasingly in the front line of the war in Afghanistan.

Civilian and military casualties are at levels not seen for a decade - last year more than 2,400 civilians died, with roadside bombs the biggest source of casualties.

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Indian bus collision 'kills 38'

7 July 2011 Last updated at 09:22 GMT The aftermath of the crash when an express train collided with the bus at an unmanned level crossing in Patiyali.

At least 38 people were killed after a train hit a bus carrying wedding guests at a level crossing in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, officials say.

The accident happened at an unmanned level crossing near Patiyali, a town 250km (160 miles) south-east of Delhi.

The express train rammed into the packed bus, dragging it several hundred metres down the track, reports said.

No one on the train was hurt. More than 30 people travelling on the bus were taken to nearby hospitals.

The bride and the groom were travelling separately and were not hurt.

An inquiry into the cause of the accident has been ordered.

Warning 'not heard'

The collision happened at about 0200 (2030 GMT Wednesday).

The bus, carrying up to 100 wedding guests, had come to a halt at the crossing after its axle broke, and it was then hit by the train, local administrator Selva Kumar told the Associated Press.

People sitting on the roof of the bus were thrown off and seriously injured while those inside were crushed, reports the BBC's Ram Dutt Tripathi in the state capital, Lucknow.

One of the injured told a local journalist that he had been sitting on the roof of the bus when he saw the train coming towards them.

He said he tried to warn the driver, who did not appear to hear him. Another injured person told journalists that the driver stopped the bus after a quarrel between the conductor and passengers.

"Talking to the survivors, it seems the bus driver must have either not seen the signal or not heard the train when he decided to attempt the crossing," SK Seth, chief of a local hospital where the injured have been admitted, told the AFP news agency.

TV pictures from the site of the accident showed policemen carrying bodies on stretchers from the wreckage of the bus. Debris was strewn across the tracks.

Train accidents are common in India, which has one of the world's busiest rail networks.

In May last year more than 100 people were killed when a Mumbai-bound express train jumped off the tracks into the path of an oncoming goods train in West Bengal. The tracks had been apparently sabotaged by Maoist rebels.

And in July 2010, more than 60 people were killed when a speeding passenger express hit another train waiting at a station in West Bengal.

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Roadside bomb kills Afghan family

2 July 2011 Last updated at 09:00 GMT US troops overseeing reconstruction work in Zabul province, and on the look-out for Taliban, close to the Pakistan border At least 11 members of a family have been killed by a roadside bomb in the southern Afghan province of Zabul.

The family, including women and children, were thought to be refugees returning home from Pakistan.

They were driving their van through Shamulzayi district when the blast occurred. They are thought to have been heading for Ghazni province.

Roadside bombs are a weapon commonly used by the Taliban in their war against western forces.

Earlier this week, 20 Afghan civilians were killed when the bus they were in hit a roadside bomb in Nimroz province in southwest Afghanistan.

Elsewhere about 500 demonstrators chanting "Death to the Pakistan military!" and "Long live Afghanistan!" protested in Kabul against rocket attacks along the border with Pakistan.

At least 36 civilians are estimated to have died in the attacks in recent weeks.

Pakistan has denied that it fired the rockets into Afghanistan.

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Nato 'kills top Afghan militant'

30 June 2011 Last updated at 13:56 GMT Smoke billows from the Intercontinental Hotel after the Tuesday night attack Nato forces in Afghanistan say they have killed a senior militant they suspect of involvement in the attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul.

Ismail Jan died in an air strike in the eastern province of Paktia on Wednesday, the alliance said.

BBC correspondents say he is a leading commander in the Haqqani network, which is linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Nato and Afghan intelligence believe Haqqani members helped mount the hotel attack, which left 22 people dead.

The Interior Ministry says nine attackers were killed as well as 11 civilians and two police.

There has so far been no independent confirmation of Ismail Jan's death.

'Precision air strike'

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the hotel attack, but Nato said it was carried out jointly with the Haqqani network.

The group has bases in the tribal region of Waziristan in Pakistan, but focuses its attacks over the border in Afghanistan.

It has been accused of carrying out a number of high-profile gun and bomb attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.

Afghan officials also say the network has close ties to Pakistani intelligence services.

A statement from the Nato-led Isaf force said Jan was suspected of providing "material support" to the hotel attackers in Kabul.

It said he had been killed in what it called a "precision air strike" in Gardez district.

"Ismail Jan was the deputy to the senior Haqqani commander inside Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan. Jan and several Haqqani fighters were killed in the strike," the statement said.

It added that he had been tracked down after information from Afghan officials, citizens and "disenfranchised insurgents".

Ismail Jan operated in and around the Khost-Gardez pass, a rugged and heavily forested area near the Pakistan border, and was blamed for leading attacks on Nato and Afghan targets.

Securing the porous and volatile border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has presented a major challenge for security forces in both countries.

On Thursday General Aminullah Amarkhel, the border police commander for eastern Afghanistan, resigned. He said Kabul and Nato had failed to act after Pakistani rockets were fired into Afghan territory.

Last week Afghan officials accused the Pakistani army of firing hundreds of rockets over the border. Pakistan denies this but says a few stray rockets may have crossed the border as the army battled militants in the area.

The army says that in recent weeks insurgents have crossed over from Afghanistan and attacked villages in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Many of the militant groups along the frontier are closely linked.

'Lapses'

In Kabul, meanwhile, the BBC has seen photos showing at least two of the Intercontinental attackers wearing police uniforms, raising questions about whether the militants received inside help.

In other photos large amounts of rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and bullets were left behind by the dead insurgents. Investigators want to know how they got their weapons inside the hotel.

Previous attacks in Kabul and elsewhere have led intelligence officials to conclude that the Haqqani network has penetrated Afghan security at the highest level.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says several police officials are now being questioned over what many see as glaring security lapses at one of the capital's apparently most secure locations.

Afghan forces are also accused of being slow to arrive on the scene once Tuesday night's attack had started.

Nato air support had to be called in before calm was finally restored.

Correspondents say the Intercontinental, which is not part of the international hotel chain of the same name, is one of Kabul's most heavily guarded hotels.

But a security ministry official told the BBC that the militants could have exploited a loophole in security caused by renovation work.

Kabul - the scene of many attacks over recent years - has been relatively stable so far this year, although violence has increased across the country since the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan on 2 May, and the start of the Taliban's "spring offensive".

In January 2008, militants stormed the capital's most popular luxury hotel, the Serena, and killed eight people, including an American, a Norwegian and a woman from the Philippines.

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India 'mystery illness' kills 28

21 June 2011 Last updated at 10:29 GMT At least 28 children in India's Bihar state have died in the past week from an unidentified illness, officials say.

Officials said that all of the children were between two and eight years. They died in Muzaffarpur town, 80kms (50 miles) from the state capital, Patna.

Bihar Health Minister Ashwani Choubey told the BBC that a team of doctors from Delhi is visiting Muzaffarpur on Tuesday to diagnose the disease.

Local doctors say the symptoms are similar to Japanese encephalitis.

But, they say, an important symptom of Japanese encephalitis is a stiffening of the neck, which is absent from the Bihar cases.

On Sunday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told reporters that the disease had not been identified yet.

"Without identifying the disease how can we say what is killing the children there? The local doctors are giving treatment only on the basis of symptoms," he said.

Officials said blood samples of some of the ill children have been sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune and National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Delhi for test and identification.

Meanwhile, local TV channels say a number of sick children are being admitted to hospitals across northern Bihar.

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