Afghan base where Prince Harry is posted attacked by Taliban, 2 dead

Kabul: Two U.S. Marines were killed and other Americans were wounded on Friday during a Taliban attack on a base in southern Afghanistan where Britain's Prince Harry is stationed, U.S. officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said Harry was on the base at the time of the attack but was unharmed.

"Prince Harry was never in any danger," spokesman Martyn Crighton said, adding that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would investigate whether his presence on the base had motivated the attack.

The attack involved rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small-arms fire, with insurgents breaching the perimeter of Camp Bastion in volatile Helmand province, U.S. officials said.

Crighton declined to offer that level of detail or give the nationalities of the victims. Crighton also did not say precisely how many people were wounded in the attack.

Earlier this week, the Afghan Taliban said they were doing everything in their power to either kill or kidnap Queen Elizabeth's grandson in what they dubbed their "Harry Operations".

Crighton said ISAF would investigate whether his presence on the base had motivated the attack.

A U.S. official told Reuters that an initial report estimated five Americans were wounded but added that the extent of their injuries was unclear. The official said that this was only an initial report and that the number could change.

Crighton said the attack took place between 9 p.m. and midnight on Friday and that NATO-led forces were still securing the area in and around Camp Bastion.

The motivation for the attack will undoubtedly come under scrutiny. Violence is sweeping the Muslim world over a film that insults the Prophet Mohammad, although the Pentagon earlier on Friday said protests in Afghanistan were so far peaceful.

© Thomson Reuters 2012

7-year-old girl, 12-year-old boy found beheaded in Afghanistan

Kabul: The decapitated bodies of a 7-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy found Friday in the country's south and east continued a spate of grisly beheadings in Afghanistan this week.

The body of the boy was discovered in the rural Panjwai district of Kandahar Province in the south, where the Taliban retain command of some areas despite regular clearing operations by American and Afghan forces.

Local residents and officials said the Taliban had killed the boy because his brother and uncle were members of the local police. The Taliban denied killing him.

There was no immediate explanation for the killing of the girl, whose body was found in a garden in the Tagab district of eastern Kapisa Province, said the governor of Kapisa, Mehrabudin Safi. Mr. Safi said she had been killed on Thursday. "So far it is not clear to the security forces who was behind this beheading," he said. "The Taliban have not claimed responsibility for it."

On Sunday, 15 men and 2 women were beheaded in a Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province, in the south.

The boy who was killed had been sent by his father from their home in the Zhari district to Spirwan in the Panjwai District to borrow money from a landowner on Wednesday. The journey would take at least a couple of hours through a dusty desert region of mud-bricked villages and vineyards in western Kandahar. But four Taliban fighters on motorcycles picked up the boy, local officials said.

"He was killed because I am supporting the government," said the boy's uncle, Mullah Zianullah, who was a former Taliban commander in Panjwai but last year joined the peace and reintegration process in Kandahar and is now leading the local police in Spirwan. "There is nothing else except killing."

Mullah Zianullah has a reputation for tough dealing with the Taliban, ordering his officers to shoot insurgents on the spot, local residents said. The Taliban, in turn, had warned him that no one in his family was safe.

A village elder who did not give his name offered another reason that the boy, who was not named, set out through Taliban territory: he had worked on a poppy field last year but had not been paid and was going to claim his wages.

Whatever the reason for the boy's journey, as soon as the Taliban discovered his family's involvement with the Afghan Local Police, a local militia trained by American forces, they were swift with their punishment, local officials said.

"The boy was beheaded immediately and his headless body dumped on the main road in Spirwan," said Jawad Faisal, the spokesman for the Kandahar governor.

A spokesman for the Taliban, reached by phone, denied the accounts. "Our supreme leader strictly prohibited beheading," said the spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, referring to the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. "We are not only rejecting it, but condemning whoever carried it out."

But this was no consolation for the boy's uncle, who said in a telephone interview that he could not go to Spirwan to claim his nephew's body for fear of further Taliban retribution.

"We have been told by people living there that the body was buried there, but we cannot go to bring the body back and the other people are afraid to help us," he said.

 

© 2012, The New York Times News Service