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| More US troops for Pak-Afghan border |
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Monday, November 24, 2008
Nato says cooperation with Pakistan ‘best ever’
KABUL: A brigade of 3,500 to 4,000 extra US troops due in Afghanistan in January will be deployed in the east amid efforts to stop infiltration of militants from Pakistan, the US military said on Sunday.
The brigade has been approved as part of requested US troop reinforcements for Afghanistan’s fight against extremists that could amount to about 20,000 personnel, US military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian told reporters in Kabul. “The first brigade that is coming will go into the (NATO-led) RC-East (Regional Command East) and they are going to move into areas that are currently not covered,” Julian said.
The area includes about a dozen provinces, many of which are on the border with Pakistan where Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other militants are said to have training camps and safe havens. Guards along the porous border are being trained and 165 border posts are being built as part of a drive to stop militants entering Afghanistan, Julian said.
“We recognise that there are certain lines or avenues that the insurgents come through (from Pakistan) and we are focusing our efforts on those,” he said. International and Afghan troops along with counterparts in Pakistan this month launched “Operation Lionheart” along the border.
“This operation will help to deny the enemies of Afghanistan safe havens in Pakistan,” Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, spokesman for a NATO-led force working alongside the US-led coalition and Afghan army, told the briefing. Julian said the top US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, has asked for three combat brigades along with support elements such as intelligence and air power, which could altogether amount to 20,000 personnel.
“However, they are dependent on the security situation in Iraq improving enough so those forces can be made available, and upon the agreement of the Afghan government,” he said. Meanwhile, NATO-led troops killed a senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, the military alliance said in a statement. Mullah Assad was a senior Taliban operational commander for southern Helmand province, and was killed in an operation on Wednesday, NATO said. US-led forces said they had killed an Afghan civilian in a battle that also left two militants dead, as 26 other Taliban-linked rebels were reported killed in separate clashes. Another four civilians, at least two of them female, were wounded in the battle in the southern province of Zabul on Thursday. Afghan and coalition forces killed 17 insurgents in airstrikes in the southern province of Kandahar late Saturday, another statement said.
Meanwhile Nato said on Sunday cooperation between its troops in Afghanistan and the Pakistani army was the best it had ever been, as the two forces hit Taliban insurgents in a coordinated operation from both sides of the border.
Tension has risen between Pakistan and Western forces in Afghanistan in recent months over increased US missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants on the Pakistani side of the mountainous, porous border.
But operations launched by Nato forces in Afghanistan’s north-eastern Kunar province and by Pakistani troops in the adjacent Bajaur district on the other side of the border represented a new level of cooperation, the spokesman said. “The cooperation with the Pakistani forces is the best it has ever been,” said Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
The cooperation was the result of tripartite meetings between ISAF, the Afghan military and Pakistani forces, he said. “This is not only a cooperation in the execution. This is also a cooperation that has happened in the planning,” Blanchette said.
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Three killed as Sh Rashid escapes attempt on life
By Shakeel Anjum
RAWALPINDI: Awami Muslim League (AML) Chief and a candidate for NA-55 (Rawalpindi) by-election Sheikh Rashid Ahmad was wounded, while three people — a guard and two party workers — were killed when four gunmen more |
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12 soldiers killed in South Waziristan
ISLAMABAD: Twelve soldiers embraced martyrdom while two others were injured in a clash with militants during the ongoing operation Rah-e-Nijat in South Waziristan Agency (SWA), the ISPR said on Monday.
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Plan to attack five-star hotel foiled
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Govt taking court for a ride
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Pakistan against arms race: Gilani
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Punjab-Sindh water row Centre’s intervention sought
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The Punjab has sai more |
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French, Dutch fight over giving LNG to Pakistan
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ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin and his team is all set to thwart the attempt of an unscrupulous combine of oil industry heavyweights and some functionaries of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Re more |
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Nine killed as no let-up in rains
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PESHAWAR: Nine people were killed and scores of others injured as heavy rains and snowfall lashed various parts of the country for the fourth consecutive day on Monday.
Reports from the Shangla district more |
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Malik orders NUML closure as protest enters 5ht day
ISLAMABAD: The protest of the students of the National University of Modern Languages (NUML) against thrashing of Professor Malik Tahir by Registrar Brigadier (R) Obaidullah Ranjha entered its fifth consecutive more |
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Malik insists no Blackwater in Pakistan
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ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik while responding to an accusation from a PML-N parliamentarian told the National Assembly that Blackwater was not providing security to the president and the prime mini more |
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FBR gets list of properties rented out to foreigners
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ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has received list of properties from Foreign Office, which were in use of foreigners in Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar and Lahore, but these were not shown in annual tax more |
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Repealing of 17th Amendment
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The prime minis more |
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Three suspects held in Mohmand
By our correspondent
GHALLANAI: The security forces arrested three suspected persons during search operation in Safi subdivision of Mohmand Agency, official sources said Monday. The sources said the security forces carried out sear more |
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No presence of Blackwater, DynCorp in Pakistan, NA body told
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Govt urged to take up water issue with India
By Asim Yasin
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Q, Parliamentary leader in the National Assembly, Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat while urging the government to take up the issue of ‘water terrorism’ with New Delhi, has question more |
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Avalanche kills 17 Indian soldiers in held Kashmir
HELD SRINAGAR: Seventeen Indian soldiers were killed on Monday in an avalanche that slammed into a group of 70 combat troops at a high-altitude warfare training camp in Kashmir, the army said on Monday.
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Taliban defiant as Afghans flee ahead of assault
KANDAHAR: The Nato commanders urged the Taliban to surrender as troops dug in on Monday for a major assault on their key stronghold in southern Afghanistan, sending thousands of residents fleeing.
The Ta more |
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Plea to freeze foreign accounts
By our correspondent
LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday ordered the federal government to submit a reply within four weeks on a petition seeking freezing of accounts in foreign banks and recovery of illegal assets accumu more |
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Attack on Sh Rashid
RAWALPINDI: The PML-N candidate for by-polls from NA-55, Malik Shakil Awan, has announced suspension of electioneering for a day to mourn the death of those killed in the attack on the office of his rival, Shei more |
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Indian forces to halt Kashmir rally outside UN office
HELD SRINAGAR: The held Kashmir authorities deployed thousands of police and troops on Monday to prevent a protest outside the UN office here over the recent killing of two teenage boys by Indian security force more |
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briefs...
20 die in Afghan floods, avalanches
KANDAHAR: Twenty people have died in floods and avalanches triggered by some of the heaviest rain and snow in Afghanistan for 50 years, an official said on Monday. At more |
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ISSN 1563-9479 
