Kabul suicide bomb kills 13 troops, civilian workers (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – A suicide car bomber on Saturday killed 13 troops and civilian employees of the NATO-led force in Kabul, including Americans and a Canadian, in the deadliest single ground attack against the coalition in 10 years of war in Afghanistan.

"Five International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service members and eight ISAF civilian employees died following a suicide vehicle-born improvised explosive device attack in Kabul earlier today," ISAF said in a statement.

A Canadian military spokesman said one of the dead was a Canadian soldier. The Pentagon said earlier all 13 of the ISAF fatalities were American. But after the Canadian death was reported, a Pentagon spokesman said Americans were among the dead but that authorities were checking the identities of those killed.

Three other civilians and a police officer were also killed in the attack on a convoy of military vehicles, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

Lethal attacks are relatively rare in the heavily guarded capital, Kabul, compared with the south and east of Afghanistan, but Saturday's killings came less than two months after insurgents launched a 20-hour assault on the U.S. Embassy in the capital.

The assault on the ISAF convoy took place late in the morning in the Darulaman area in the west of the city, near the national museum.

The former royal palace, now in ruins, is also in the area, along with several government departments and Afghan and foreign military bases.

The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it packed a four-wheel-drive vehicle with 700 kg (1,500 pounds) of explosives.

SECURITY HANDOVER

The attack is likely to heighten worries about the reach of insurgent forces as the United States and its allies prepare to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces by 2014.

"We are confident we can undertake the transition," NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, Simon Gass, said at a meeting in Kabul on Saturday before the attack. "If we compare the security situation to how it was two years ago, we can see very dramatic improvements in many areas."

In two other attacks on Saturday, three Australians and an Afghan linguist were killed in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan when an attacker wearing an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire on them, authorities in neighboring Kandahar province said.

In Kunar province, east of Kabul, a teenage female suicide bomber killed herself and wounded several National Directorate of Security members in an attack on the NDS building.

ISAF commander General John Allen condemned the attacks in a statement later on Saturday, as did the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

"Our common enemy continues to employ suicide attackers to kill innocent Afghan fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, as well as the Coalition forces who have volunteered to protect them," Allen said in a statement.

A spokesman for U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Pentagon chief was determined the United States would continue its "aggressive pursuit of the enemy."

Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the start of the war 10 years ago, according to the United Nations, despite the presence of more than 130,000 foreign troops.

ISAF says there has recently been a fall in attacks by insurgents, but that data exclude attacks that kill only civilians and attacks on Afghan security forces operating without international troops.

On Thursday, insurgents armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked two bases used by foreign troops in southern Afghanistan. An Afghan interpreter working for ISAF was killed in that attack, which stretched into Friday before the last of the four insurgents were killed.

There has been a series of high-profile assassinations, as well as day-to-day attacks by Taliban raiders, over the past year.

More than a dozen people were killed in the September attack on the U.S. Embassy and ISAF headquarters.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney; Writing and additional reporting by Daniel Magnowski in Kabul, Susan Cornwell in Washington and Janet Guttsman in Toronto; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Intense fire on Norwegian cruise ship kills 2 crew (AP)

By BJOERN H. AMLAND, Associated Press Bjoern H. Amland, Associated Press – 40?mins?ago

OSLO, Norway – An "intense" fire in a cruise ship's engine room killed two crewmen Thursday, injured nine others and forced over 200 passengers to evacuate a popular cruise off Norway's craggy western coast. Police suspect an on-board explosion.

Thick black smoke billowed from the stern of the boat, the MS Nordlys, of Norway's Hurtigruten line even before it pulled into the dock at Aalesund, 230 miles (375 kilometers) northwest of the capital of Oslo. Police sealed off parts of the town as the smoke engulfed nearby buildings.

The ship's emergency evacuation began after the fire started at 9 a.m. (0700 GMT), with more than 100 passengers piling into lifeboats in the frigid waters. The rest of the ship's 207 passengers and 55 crew were evacuated at the dock at Aalesund, with some crew staying on board to fight the fire.

Aalesund Hospital said nine people had been admitted, two with serious burns and smoke injuries. Police said all of the injured and dead were members of the ship's crew.

"Our suspicion is that there was an explosion in the machine room," Acting Police Chief Yngve Skovly of the Sunnmoere Police District told reporters later Thursday.

Passengers said the cruise ship, which was traveling north from the city of Bergen, had organized an orderly evacuation.

"We were sent up on deck and given our lifevests," Danielle Passebois-Paya, a French tourist, told Norwegian daily Aftenposten. "It took only a few minutes after the alarm and we were in the lifeboats."

"It was a well-organized evacuation," she added. "The crew did a really good job. Everything was calm and went smoothly. There was no panic."

The chief of Aalesund's fire brigade, Geir Thorsen, described the fire as "big and intense." He could not confirm reports that the ship's fire-extinguishing system did not work, but said its electricity system was knocked out.

"There are no indications that the fire had spread to other rooms in the ship," he said.

Over six hours after the fire began, Thorsen said firefighters were now in control of it, but the ship was taking in water and listing 10 degrees.

"Our main challenge now is the stability of the ship," he said. Two units of firefighters specializing in offshore fires were involved in the operation.

The MS Nordlys plies Norway's western coast on the popular 1,500-mile (2,500-kilometer) cruise between the southwestern city of Bergen and the northern town of Kirkenes, high above the Arctic Circle near the Russian border. The route features spectacular fjords, mountains, islands and Arctic wildlife, and carries both tourists eager to see the scenery and locals and cargo from coastal cities and hamlets.

Aalesund, with a population of 42,000, is an Art Nouveau town once voted the prettiest in Norway.

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Tank, navy attack on Syria's Latakia kills 24-witnesses (Reuters)

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian tanks and navy ships shelled the main Mediterranean port city of Latakia Sunday, residents and rights groups said, killing 24 people as President Bashar al-Assad's forces launched an offensive by land and sea to crush protests against his rule.

Since the beginning of the fasting month of Ramadan on August 1, Assad's forces have stormed major urban centers and outlying regions where protests demanding political freedom and an end to 41 years of Assad family rule have been attracting crowds in larger numbers, human rights campaigners said.

"I can see the silhouettes of two grey vessels. They are firing their guns and the impact is landing on al-Raml al-Filistini and al-Shaab neighborhoods," one witness told Reuters by phone from Latakia, where tanks and armored vehicles were deployed three months ago to crush dissent against Assad in mainly Sunni neighborhoods of the mixed city.

"This is the most intense attack on Latakia since the uprising. Anyone who sticks his head out of the window risks being shot. They want to finish off the demonstrations for good," he said.

Each night, an average of 20,000 people have been rallying daily to demand Assad's removal in different areas across the city after Ramadan evening prayers, known as "tarawih," the witness said.

The Syrian Revolution Coordinating Union said 32 civilians were killed Sunday. Among them were 24 in Latakia, including a two-year-old girl, Ola al-Jablawi. The deaths came after security forces shot dead 20 people during nationwide marches on Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the casualties were from machineguns targeting heavily populated residential districts.

"After heavy firing, troops and shabbiha (militiamen loyal to Assad) have reached the main square in al-Raml al-Filistini, where the crowds have been demonstrating peacefully for freedom and the downfall of the regime," said a statement by the grassroots activists' group.

The official state news agency denied that Latakia was hit from the sea and said two police and four unidentified armed men were killed when "order preservation forces pursued armed men who were terrorizing residents.. and using machineguns and explosives from rooftops and from behind barricades."

Nevertheless, the assaults by Syrian security forces are being met with increasing international condemnation. United Nations deputy political affairs chief Oscar Fernandez-Taranco was quoted by diplomats in New York Wednesday as saying that Assad's forces killed nearly 2,000 Syrian civilians since March -- 188 since July 31 and 87 on August 8 alone.

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation called on Saturday for an immediate halt to the military campaign against protesters. U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah repeated their calls for the military assaults to stop.

Obama also spoke to British Prime Minister David Cameron and the leaders called for an immediate end to attacks by Assad's forces, the White House said. It said Obama and Cameron would "consult on further steps in the days ahead," which could result in more sanctions on Assad, with Washington calling on Europe and China to consider sanctions on Syria's oil industry, a key source of hard currency for the ruling hierarchy.

SECTARIAN SPLIT

Syrian authorities have expelled most independent media since the beginning of the uprising making verifying events on the ground difficult.

Residents and rights campaigners said security forces and shabbiha members continued house to house raids Sunday in the northwestern Idlib province on the border with Turkey, in the southern Hauran Plain, cradle of the uprising, Damascus suburbs and in the countryside of the city of Hama, which remains besieged by the military.

Hundreds of people were arrested, adding to at least 12,000 Syrians who have been detained since the uprising and thousands of political prisoners in Syria from before, they added.

Assad, from Syria's Alawite minority, has repeatedly said Syria is facing a foreign conspiracy to divide the country of 20 million. The authorities blame "armed terrorist groups" for the bloodshed, and say 500 police and troops have been killed.

But Assad's statements appear to have found little resonance among the majority Sunni population of Latakia, where, similar to urban centers in the rest of the country, the ruling minority has encouraged Alawites to move from their traditional mountain regions, luring them with cheap land and jobs in the public sector and security apparatus.

The Latakia port figures highly in the Assad family domination of the economy, with Bashar al-Assad's late uncle Jamil having been in virtual control of the facility, and a new generation of family members and their friends taking over.

Demonstrations against Assad during the five-month uprising have been biggest in Sunni neighborhoods of Latakia, including Salibiya in the center of the city and Raml al-Filistini and al-Shaab on the southern shore.

Troops and tanks have been besieging the two neighborhoods for months, residents say, with garbage going uncollected and electricity regularly being cut.

In March, leading Syrian opposition and civic figures, including Aref Dalila, a prominent economist from Latakia, issued a declaration denouncing sectarianism and committing to non-violent democratic change in the wake of disturbances involving the shabbiha.

Dalila, an Alawite, has repeatedly warned against Latakia being used by the authorities to whip up sectarian fears among Alawites of a backlash against them if they lose power, instead of concentrating on transforming Syria into a democracy where all sects would enjoy equal treatment under a new constitution.

(Editing by Rosalind Russell)

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U.S. says kills Taliban who shot down helicopter (Reuters)

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) – NATO-led forces killed the Taliban militants responsible for shooting down a U.S. helicopter last weekend but not the insurgent leader targeted in the doomed mission, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan said on Wednesday.

The disclosure by General John Allen came during a briefing on the crash that killed 30 U.S. forces -- most of them elite Navy SEALs -- in the single deadliest incident for the U.S. military in the Afghan war. Eight Afghans were also killed in the crash in a remote valley southwest of Kabul.

Allen acknowledged that the main Taliban leader sought in the August 6 operation was still at large.

"Did we get the leader that we were going after in the initial operation? No, we did not," Allen said. "And we're going to continue to pursue that network."

The deaths of so many Americans have resonated in a way at home that other battlefield incidents have not, with relatives, pastors and friends of the fallen appearing in U.S. media, praising troops fighting an unpopular war that usually takes a backseat to concerns like the economy.

U.S. President Barack Obama flew to Dover Air Force Base on Tuesday to watch the arrival of the remains of those killed and the military has launched an investigation into the incident, as questions swirled over whether it departed from protocol.

Allen defended the decision to send in the elite team, saying it was necessary to chase militants who were escaping an ongoing operation that targeted an important Taliban leader.

"We committed a force to contain that element from getting out. And, of course, in the process of that, the aircraft was struck by an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and crashed," Allen told Pentagon reporters via video-conference from Kabul.

Allen said a subsequent air strike around midnight on August 8 killed other Taliban insurgents believed to be behind the attack -- an assertion the Taliban immediately challenged.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said those killed were Taliban leader Mullah Mohibullah and the insurgent who it said fired the shot that downed the CH-47 helicopter. It said the two men were trying to flee the country -- presumably to safe havens in neighboring Pakistan. The Pentagon said they were in a compound when they were hit by F-16 aircraft.

In Afghanistan, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, denied that the person responsible for shooting down the helicopter was killed.

"The person who shot down the helicopter is alive and he is in another province operating against (foreign forces)," he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

FAILED MISSION?

The elite team of U.S. forces was sent in to help complete an operation started late on Friday by an ISAF Special Operations Command team that included at least some U.S. Rangers in central Maidan Wardak province.

Allen was asked why the elite team was traveling in a slow-moving CH-47 Chinook.

"We've run more than a couple of thousand of these night operations over the last year, and this is the only occasion where this has occurred," he said. "It's not uncommon at all to use this aircraft on our special missions."

The investigation by NATO will to focus on the barrage of fire the U.S. force encountered as it headed into the fight.

Allen said he believed an RPG was at least partly to blame, but acknowledged small arms fire may also have played a role.

"We don't know with any certainty what hit (it)," he said.

(Additional reporting by Paul Tait, Mirwais Harooni and Michelle Nichols in Kabul; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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Syrian army kills 80 people storming Hama (Reuters)

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian tanks firing shells and machineguns stormed the city of Hama Sunday, killing at least 80 civilians in a move to crush demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, rights activists and residents said.

Assad's forces began their assault on the city, scene of a 1982 massacre, at dawn after besieging it for nearly a month. The state news agency said the military entered Hama to purge armed groups "shooting intensively to terrorize citizens."

A U.S. embassy official dismissed the official account, saying Syrian authorities had begun a war against their own people by attacking Hama. Britain and France, which had led European overtures toward Assad, also condemned the assault.

"It is desperate. The authorities think that somehow they can prolong their existence by engaging in full armed warfare on their own citizens," U.S. Press Attache J.J. Harder told Reuters by telephone from Damascus. He described the official Syrian description of the violence as "nonsense."

The Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah said the civilian death toll in Hama had risen to 80. The independent group cited medical officials and witnesses in its report.

Syrian authorities have expelled most independent journalists since the unrest began in March, making it difficult to verify reports of violence and casualties.

Hama has particular significance for the anti-Assad movement since Assad's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, sent in troops to smash an Islamist-led uprising there in 1982, razing entire neighborhoods and killing up to 30,000 people in the bloodiest episode of Syria's modern history.

The current unrest has pitted primarily demonstrators from the Sunni Muslim majority against Assad's minority Alawite sect, which dominates the security services and ultra-loyalist army divisions commanded by Assad's feared brother Maher.

BID TO CRUSH PROTESTS BEFORE RAMADAN?

Some critics said Assad's assault on Hama suggested an attempt to stamp out unrest before Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month where people refrain from food and drink between dawn and dusk, begins Monday.

"Assad is trying to resolve the matter before Ramadan when every daily fasting prayer threatens to become another Friday (of post-prayer protests). But he is pouring oil on a burning fire and now the Hama countryside is rising in revolt," said Yasser Saadeldine, a Syrian Islamist living in exile in Qatar.

He said the attack on Hama marks a significant escalation in Assad's reliance on the military to stifle dissent.

"Assad has chosen to dig deeper into the security option, especially with a retreat in the tough international and regional stances against the regime," Saadedine told Reuters.

European Union governments planned to extend sanctions against Assad's government Monday by slapping asset freezes and travel bans on five more people. The EU has already imposed sanctions on Assad and at least two dozen officials and targeted military-linked companies in Syria.

A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said reports of violence inflicted on peaceful protesters were "appalling," calling on Assad to desist from attacks now and pursue meaningful democratic change.

The U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, visited Hama earlier this month in a gesture of international support for what he described as peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations.

Hama residents said tanks and snipers were firing Sunday at unarmed residential districts where inhabitants had set up makeshift roadblocks to try and stop their advance.

They said that irregular Alawite "shabbiha" militia accompanied the invading forces in buses.

Citing hospital officials, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier that the death toll in Hama was likely to rise, mentioning that dozens were badly wounded in the attack.

A doctor, who did not want to be further identified for fear of arrest, told Reuters that most bodies were taken to the city's Badr, al-Horani and Hikmeh hospitals.

Scores of people were wounded and blood for transfusions was in short supply, he said by telephone from the city, which has a population of around 700,000.

"Tanks are attacking from four directions. They are firing their heavy machineguns randomly and overrunning makeshift road blocks erected by the inhabitants," the doctor said, the sound of machinegun fire crackling in the background.

The state news agency said military units were fighting gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns.

Another resident said that in Sunday's assault, bodies were lying uncollected in the streets and so the death toll would rise. Army snipers had climbed onto the roofs of the state-owned electricity company and the main prison, he said.

Tank shells were falling at the rate of four a minute in and around north Hama, residents said. Electricity and water supplies to the main neighborhoods had been cut, a tactic used regularly by the military when sweeping into restive towns.

The Alawites have dominated Syria, a majority Sunni Muslim country, since the Baath Party took power in a 1963 coup.

In 2000, Assad succeeded his late father, keeping the autocratic political system he inherited intact, while expanding the Assad family's share of the economy through monopolies awarded to relatives and friends.

Opposition sources said Sunday that secret police personnel had arrested Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir, head of the main Baqqara tribe in the rebellious province of Deir al-Zor.

Bashir, who commands the allegiance of an estimated 1.2 million Baqqara, was abducted in the Ein Qirsh district of Damascus Saturday afternoon, they added.

Hours before his arrest Bashir told Reuters he was striving to stop armed resistance to a military assault on the provincial capital of Deir al-Zor and convince inhabitants to stick to peaceful methods, despite killings by security forces.

INSPIRATION: ARAB SPRING

Assad is trying to choke off an uprising that broke out in March, inspired by the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and has spread across many areas of Syria.

Unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, however, there has been no swift downfall of Syria's autocratic elite because of a much harsher security crackdown on protesters and the fears of a significant number of Syrians who have not joined the unrest about possible sectarian anarchy if Assad is driven out.

In southern Syria, rights campaigners said security forces killed three civilians when they stormed houses in the town of al-Hirak, 35 km (20 miles) northeast of the city of Deraa.

Local activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights added dozens of people, including three women, were arrested.

The Observatory said troops also arrested more than 100 people in the Damascus suburb of Mouadamiyah. A Western diplomat said he saw several tanks enter the suburb.

"The regime thinks it can scare people before Ramadan and make them stay home. But especially the people of Hama have shown themselves to be resilient," the diplomat said.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, once one of Assad's main allies, said in May "we do not want to see another Hama massacre," and warned the 45-year-old president that it would be hard to contain the consequences if it were repeated.

The Syrian leadership blames "armed terrorist groups" for most killings during the revolt, saying that more than 500 soldiers and security personnel have been killed.

An activist group, Avaaz, said in a report last week that Syrian security forces had killed 1,634 people in the course of their crackdown, while at least 2,918 had disappeared. A further

26,000 had been arrested, many of whom were beaten and tortured, and 12,617 remained in detention, it said.

In the east of the country, Syrian forces began an assault two days ago in a tribal oil-producing province on the border with Iraq's Sunni heartland.

Residents said at least 11 civilians were killed in Deir al-Zor Saturday and Sunday. "There are army tanks in the streets, but most of the deaths have been at the hands of Military Intelligence," one of the residents told Reuters.

The Syrian Revolution Coordination Union said 57 soldiers in Deir al-Zor, including two lieutenants and a captain, had defected to the demonstrators. It said residents had formed local committees and erected makeshift barriers to try to halt the advance of tanks and armoured vehicles inside the city.

Syrian television said an army colonel and two soldiers have been killed by armed groups in Deir al-Zor.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi and Oliver Holmes; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Sectarian killing spree kills 30 in Syria (AP)

BEIRUT – The discovery of three corpses with their eyes gouged out set off a sectarian killing spree that left 30 people dead in a chilling sign that the Syrian revolt against President Bashar Assad is enflaming long-simmering religious tensions.

The opposition accused the president's minority Alawite regime of trying to stir up trouble among the Sunni majority to blunt the growing enthusiasm for the four-month-old uprising. The protesters have been careful to portray their movement as free of any sectarian overtones.

The killings over the weekend in the central city of Homs "undermine the peaceful nature of the revolution and serve its enemies who want to turn it into a civil war," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Homs-based activist Mohammad Saleh said the violence began Saturday after the corpses of three Alawite government supporters were dumped in Homs with their eyes gouged.

The men had gone missing two days earlier.

On Sunday, six bodies from various sects were found in the city, apparently in revenge attacks, Saleh said. Pro-government Alawite thugs called shabiha then went on a rampage, another activist said, opening fire in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods of Homs.

The dead included a 27-year-old mother of three, who was shot as she left her home, and a man in his 50s who was struck by a bullet on his balcony, a resident said.

"I was at the man's funeral yesterday, all he did was go out on his balcony," he said, adding that civilians have started setting up roadblocks to protect their neighborhoods. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Up to 40 shops were vandalized or burned, he said.

"It was a catastrophe, the situation could easily have slipped out of control," the resident said, adding the situation calmed down Monday but tensions were high.

Sectarian warfare is among the most dire scenarios facing Syria.

The country is home to more than 1 million refugees from neighboring Iraq, who serve as a clear testament to the dangers of regime collapse and fracture in a religiously divided society. They also see the seemingly intractable sectarian tensions in Lebanon as a cautionary tale.

"The Assad regime itself has a vested interest to portray the protest movement as one which is violent led by criminals, terrorists and by external actors," said Anthony Skinner, associate director at Maplecroft, a British-based risk analysis company.

"This is potentially an issue that Assad can manipulate to try and divide the momentum that we have seen building up," he said.

The Assad regime has long held together a fragile jigsaw puzzle of Middle Eastern backgrounds — Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druse, Circassians, Armenians and more.

An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Alawite sect represents about 11 percent of the population in Syria. The sect's longtime dominance has bred seething resentments, which Assad has worked to tamp down by enforcing a strictly secular identity in Syria.

But now, Assad is relying heavily on his Alawite power base to crush the uprising, particularly amid rumors that Sunni army conscripts have been refusing to fire on civilians.

He has tried to dampen enthusiasm for the revolt by blaming the unrest on "armed gangs" and a foreign plot to sow sectarian strife.

Minority groups have been receptive to Assad's argument that only his regime can guarantee law and order, in part because they fear being marginalized if the Sunni majority takes over.

In part due to the shabiha's role in the crackdown, Syria's sectarian tensions have been laid bare for the first time in decades — a taboo subject because of the Assad family's 40-year dynasty of minority rule. Assad's father and predecessor crushed a Sunni uprising in 1982, shelling the town of Hama and killing tens of thousands in a massacre that is seared into the minds of Syrians.

On Monday, the Interior Ministry said it will deal firmly with "terrorist groups" and armed gunmen who are carrying out terrorist acts and torching private and public property.

Human rights group say more than 1,600 people, most of them unarmed civilians, have been killed in Assad's crackdown on a largely peaceful protest movement. The government disputes that toll and blames the unrest on gunmen and religious extremists looking to stir up sectarian strife.

Some 350 soldiers and policemen also are believed to have died in the unrest.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Saleh, the Homs activist, put the death toll in Homs at 30 and said they have the names of the victims.

But another activist in Homs said he's not certain if the death toll was as high as 30 and said the number could be lower.

Also Monday, Syria's pro-government Al-Watan newspaper said that the Qatari embassy in Damascus has suspended operations because of recent protests outside the embassy against Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Syrian uprising. Al-Jazeera is based in Qatar.

Syria accuses Al-Jazeera and other media of incitement and fabricating events in their coverage of the protests.

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Zeina Karam can be reached on http://twitter.com/zkaram

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India: Terror attack kills 17, wounds 81 in Mumbai (AP)

By RAJESH SHAH and MUNEEZA NAQVI, Associated Press Rajesh Shah And Muneeza Naqvi, Associated Press – 3?mins?ago

MUMBAI, India – Near-simultaneous bomb blasts rocked three busy neighborhoods during evening rush hour in India's busy financial capital Wednesday, killing 17 people in what the government called an apparent terrorist attack on the city besieged by militants nearly three years ago.

Blood-covered bodies lay on the streets and people hugged and wept. Others carried the wounded to taxis. Crowds gathered in the blast areas as police questioned witnesses, and bomb squads inspected the undercarriages of vehicles searching for clues and other explosives.

Motorcycles were charred, shopfronts shattered and a bus stop ripped apart. A photograph showed victims crowding into the back of a cargo truck to be taken to a hospital.

The first blast struck the Jhaveri Bazaar at 6.54 p.m., tearing through the famed jewelry market. A minute later, a second blast hit the busy business district of Opera House, several miles (kilometers) away in southern Mumbai. At 7:05 p.m., the third bomb exploded in the crowded neighborhood of Dadar in central Mumbai, according to police.

Because of the close timing of the bomb blasts, "we infer that this was a coordinated attack by terrorists," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.

Indian officials refused to speculate on who might be behind the blasts. Past attacks have been blamed on Pakistan-based militants, and Indian officials have accused Pakistan's powerful spy agency of helping coordinate and fund some of those strikes, including the Mumbai siege.

A U.S. official says there are no claims of responsibility, or firm indication of which terrorist group might be behind the attack at this time. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

"The entire city of Mumbai has been put on high alert," Chidambaram said. "I would appeal to the people of Mumbai and people all over the country to remain calm and to maintain peace."

An eyewitness at Jhaveri Bazaar described two motorcycles exploding in flames and saw at least six bodies.

"People were shouting 'Help me, help me,'" the man told Headlines Today television.

Another witness showed cell phone clips of several bodies sprawled across the street to the NDTV news station.

Prithviraj Chavan, the top official in the state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai was located, said the blasts killed 17 people and wounded 81 others. Chidambaram said the toll was likely to rise.

The blasts marked the first major attack on Mumbai since 10 militants laid siege to India's financial capital for 60 hours in November 2008.

That attack, which targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and a busy train station, killed 166 people and escalated tensions between India and Pakistan. Peace talks were suspended and resumed only recently.

Pakistan's government expressed distress on the loss of lives and injuries soon after Wednesday's blasts were reported.

Some media incorrectly reported the blasts happened on the birthday of Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving gunmen from the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Kasab, who was sentenced to death in Mumbai, was born on Sept. 13.

Mumbai has been on edge since the 2008 attack. In December, authorities deployed extra police on city streets after receiving intelligence that a Pakistan-based militant group was planning an attack over New Year's weekend. Police conducted house-to-house searches in some neighborhoods for four men who authorities believe entered the city to carry out a terrorist attack, and computer-aided photographs of the four suspects were released.

In March 2010, Mumbai police said they prevented a major terrorist strike after they arrested two Indian men, who, police said, were preparing to hit several targets in the city. In September, police issued a terror alert for the city during a popular Hindu festival.

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Naqvi reported from New Delhi. Associated Press writers Ravi Nessman in New Delhi and Kimberly Dozier in Washington contributed to this report.

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Cypriot defense min resigns after blast kills 12 (AP)

MARI, Cyprus – A massive explosion ripped through a Cypriot naval base Monday after a brush fire detonated gunpowder stored in containers, killing 12 people, wounding 62 and prompting the resignations of the country's defense minister and top military chief.

Bodies covered with white sheets lay scattered on a charred hillside near the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base on the Mediterranean island's southern coast, while ambulances ferried the injured to hospitals in Larnaca and Limassol. The bodies of the dead where taken to a morgue at Nicosia hospital in the Cypriot capital.

The blast occurred in the early hours of the morning when a brush fire approached dozens of storage containers holding gunpowder that had been confiscated in 2009 from a ship heading from Iran to Syria.

With criticism mounting over how the material had been handled and stored, Defense Minister Costas Papacostas and the country's top military official, National Guard chief Brig. Gen. Petros Tsalikides, resigned over the incident.

Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said investigators had ruled out sabotage as a cause for the blast, but wouldn't elaborate further. He said experts will be called from abroad to assist police and national guard investigators to determine the exact cause of the explosion.

Greece's National Defense General Staff said it was sending "specialized military and security force personnel" to Cyprus to help with investigations following a Cypriot request.

Asked about concerns that the base commander had reportedly expressed fears over the safety of the gunpowder's storage area, Stefanou said officials convened a meeting last week at the Defense Ministry to discuss the matter followed by an onsite inspection of the storage area.

He said certain decisions were made but weren't implemented in time to prevent the incident.

Fifty of the 62 people injured had been treated and released from hospitals, Stefanou said. Two of those still hospitalized had suffered serious injuries.

President Dimitris Christofias had asked Tsalikides and Papacostas to remain in their posts until replacements were found.

Stefanou said the government has declared a three-day mourning period with all flags at public buildings flying at half staff. State funerals would be held for those killed, he said.

The concussion wave from the blast damaged houses in nearby villages, and knocked out the island's main power station, leading to power cuts in several areas. Authorities appealed to the public to limit their electricity consumption, which has spiked amid a three-day heatwave that has led to temperatures of about 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

Airport authorities said both Paphos and Larnaca airports were reducing power consumption to the minimum possible and had turned on their generators.

The Agriculture Ministry also urged the public to reduce water consumption as much as possible because desalination plants had been taken offline due to power problems.

The blast occurred just one day shy of the ninth anniversary of a fatal national guard helicopter crash that killed then National Guard commander Evangelos Florakis — for which the naval base is named — and four other officers.

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NATO air strike kills 13 civilians: Afghan police (AFP)

KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) – Up to 13 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in a NATO air strike on Thursday in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, provincial police chief Mohamad Zazai said.

The coalition said those killed were family members of insurgents who also died in the strike that was called in after Afghan-led forces came under fire.

The deaths triggered protests blocking the main highway to Kabul nearby, with civilian casualties in Western military operations extremely sensitive in war-torn Afghanistan, where the Taliban have waged a decade-long insurgency.

"Unfortunately eight women, four children, and one man were killed in a NATO air strike on a residential house in Dowamanda district early this morning," Zazai said, adding that four Taliban-linked Haqqani militants were also killed.

"The body of a Haqqani commander and three fighters have also been recovered from the vicinity of the house. A delegation has been sent to investigate the incident," he said.

A spokesman for the provincial governor confirmed that civilians had been killed in the incident but gave no further details.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said those killed were family members of the Haqqani network, which is a target of the alliance force. It did not say how many civilians were among the dead.

A spokesman for the coalition said Afghan-led forces had gone in search of the insurgents when they came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.

"Responding to the insurgent attack, the security forces returned fire and called in an air weapons team. The subsequent air strike killed several insurgents and unintentionally a number of associated family members," he said.

The air strike came a day after provincial authorities in southern Ghazni province said two civilians were killed and one other injured in another military incident. NATO said it was looking into the allegations.

Eight Afghan policemen were meanwhile killed Thursday when their vehicle struck a mine in Jawzjan province in northern Afghanistan, police in the province said.

Police also said that six Afghan policemen and a civilian were killed in another landmine blast in the restive southern province of Uruzgan late Wednesday.

The Taliban were not available to comment on the attacks but roadside bombs are one of their most widely used weapons against the Western-backed Afghan government.

Civilians are the biggest casualties in the near 10-year war in Afghanistan, where 150,000 foreign forces are stationed.

Last year was the bloodiest yet for civilians, with the United Nations recording 2,777 fatalities.

In May this year alone, a total of 368 civilians were killed, 301 of them in insurgent attacks, according to figures released by the UN mission in Afghanistan, making it the deadliest month for civilians since at least 2007.

The UN has blamed insurgents for more than three-quarters of the civilian deaths last year, but the issue enflames anger among ordinary Afghans toward foreign forces, as they blame NATO's presence for the increased danger.

The latest civilian deaths are a reminder of the depth of the task facing the Afghan government as it takes increasing responsibility for security following the announcement of the first wave of foreign troop withdrawals.

The United States has announced that 33,000 "surge" forces will leave the war by the end of next summer, while Britain has said another 500 troops will return next year. France and Belgium have also announced limited withdrawals.

Civilian casualties are a huge bone of contention between foreign forces and President Hamid Karzai who issued a "last warning" to the military in early June to avoid "arbitrary and unnecessary" operations that kill civilians.

Those comments came after he said 14 people died in an air strike in southern Helmand province. NATO said nine civilians were killed in the strike.

In another high-profile case this year, two NATO helicopters killed nine Afghan boys as they collected firewood in northeastern Afghanistan, leading to a rare apology from the US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

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Kadhafi shelling kills 11 in Misrata, most civilians: rebels (AFP)

BENGHAZI, Libya (AFP) – Shelling by forces loyal to Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi killed 11 people and wounded another 57, almost all civilians, in the western rebel enclave of Misrata, insurgents said.

Earlier, the sources said five rebels were killed in fighting at the western entrance to the city, the sources said.

"Eleven people were killed and 57 wounded, almost all of them civilians," a rebel source told AFP by telephone from Misrata. 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of Tripoli.

The news came as Paris said the rebels, increasingly confident on the ground, no longer need weapons drops from France, and as a senior Russian official reported that Moamer Kadhafi is conditionally ready to step down.

Meanwhile, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance would like to see to see the United Nations assume the leading role in Libya's transition to democracy in the event Kadhafi leaves power.

"There is emerging a political order distinct from that of Tripoli," French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said. "The (rebel) territories are organising their autonomy... That is why the parachute drops are no longer necessary."

Last week, France said it supplied light arms including rifles and rocket launchers to the rebels for "self-defence" in line with a UN resolution and that it informed NATO and the Security Council of its plan to do so.

Russia criticised the arms drops, and France's NATO ally Britain expressed reservations.

UN Security Council Resolution 1970, passed in February, prohibited states from providing any kind of arms to Libya. Resolution 1973 in March authorised nations "to take all necessary measures" to help protect civilians.

Longuet was cautious about the rebels' chances of defeating Kadhafi in a major offensive they have said they are preparing on Tripoli.

They have a "growing capacity to organise politically and militarily" but are "currently not in a stabilised, centralised system," he said.

On the diplomatic front, an unnamed senior Russian official was quoted on Tuesday as saying Kadhafi is ready to cede power in exchange for security guarantees.

"The colonel is sending signals that he is ready to cede power in exchange for security guarantees," the respected business daily Kommersant quoted the official as saying.

The Russian source added that France appeared the country most willing to play a part by unfreezing some of the Kadhafi family's accounts and promising to help him avoid trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

On Monday, Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaaim had said contacts between Tripoli and rebel-stronghold Benghazi were continuing across several cities in Europe in order to seek a reconciliation and avoid bloodshed.

The Kommersant report came a day after NATO's Rasmussen discussed Libya in Russia with President Dmitry Medvedev and South African President Jacob Zuma, fresh from an African Union summit that tried to forge a regional peace plan.

Russia has advocated the AU taking a leading role in negotiations to end the conflict, and Zuma, highly critical of NATO air raids, told Medvedev he hoped the alliance would better appreciate the AU's concerns.

One of the new elements in the road map agreed by the AU on Friday included provisions for a multinational peacekeeping force organised by the United Nations.

But the rebels have thus far rejected the AU's settlement terms and Russia has also failed to convince Kadhafi to leave.

"There is absolutely no current or future possibility for Kadhafi to remain in Libya," said National Transitional Council chief Mustafa Mohammed Abdel Jalil.

"There is no escape clause for Kadhafi -- he must be removed from power and face justice," Jalil said in a statement.

In other developments, NTC foreign affairs point man Mahmud Jibril was to hold in Ankara on Tuesday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his United Arab Emirates counterpart, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan, a senior Turkish diplomat said.

The talks are to prepare the ground for a meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya, scheduled for July 15-16 in Istanbul, the diplomat told AFP.

Also Tuesday, Davutoglu was to meet separately with the special UN envoy for Libya, Abdul Ilah al-Khatib, the Turkish diplomat said.

The increased diplomatic activity comes amid a toughening Turkish stance on Libya after Ankara's initial criticism of the Western air strikes.

On Sunday, Davutoglu visited Benghazi, recognised the NTC as "the legitimate representative of the Libyan people" and offered $200 million in aid.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is NATO's sole Muslim-majority member and an influential regional player, has called on Kadhafi to cede power and leave Libya.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen is to meet Libyan opposition members in Brussels next week, an alliance diplomat said Tuesday, their first invitation to NATO headquarters.

Speaking in Saint Petersburg on Tuesday, Rasmussen said "to accommodate the legitimate aspirations of the Libyan people, it is necessary that Kadhafi leaves power.

"After that, it is necessary to ensure a transition to democracy... We want the United Nations to take the lead in this effort."

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NATO air strike kills fighter linked to Afghan hotel attack (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – NATO aircraft killed an insurgent leader linked to a deadly hotel attack in the Afghan capital this week, the coalition said on Thursday, a raid that raised questions about whether Afghan forces are ready for the looming security transition.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Intercontinental, one of two major hotels used by foreigners and Afghan government officials, a rare night-time raid that began on Tuesday and ended five hours later with 12 killed.

However, the NATO-led Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network had also been involved in the assault by nine suicide bombers and gunmen.

ISAF identified the Haqqani network leader killed in an air strike as Ismail Jan, who it described as a deputy to the senior Haqqani commander in Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan.

It said he and "several Haqqani fighters" were killed in the air strike in the Gardez district of Paktia province south of Kabul on Wednesday.

"The Haqqani network, in conjunction with Taliban operatives, was responsible for the Tuesday night attack on the Kabul Intercontinental hotel which killed 12 people, including a provincial judge," ISAF said in a statement.

The brazen raid came only a week after President Barack Obama announced a phased withdrawal of combat troops, with 10,000 to leave by the end of this year and another 23,000 by the end September 2012.

Obama's announcement preceded the start of a gradual transition of responsibility to Afghan forces from next month that will end with all foreign combat troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

With that transition process to begin in seven areas next month, the hotel raid raised serious questions about whether Afghan forces, particularly the police, were ready to take over.

"It shows one of the concerns is that the Afghan security forces are growing in quantity, not in quality," said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network.

SNIPERS

The attack ended when snipers on board a NATO helicopter killed the last three attackers fighting from the roof of the hotel. Earlier television footage showed Afghan forces firing wildly into the air.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that some police had refused to fight back.

ISAF has been training members of the 126,000-strong Afghan National Police since 2009.

Afghan police, who will be at the front line of the security transition in villages and towns across Afghanistan, have long been viewed as inept and lagging behind the training of the better-equipped army, which had been the focus of training efforts since the Taliban were toppled in late 2001.

Violence has risen to record levels across Afghanistan over the past 18 months as NATO troops, especially U.S. forces, hit back against a growing insurgency, especially in the Taliban heartland in the south.

A quarterly report by the United Nations secretary-general to the Security Council about Afghanistan found that the number of security incidents since March had risen 51 percent on the same period in 2010, with suicide attacks rising sharply.

Attacks in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar were especially worrying. "The city of Kandahar and its surroundings registered the majority of the incidents during the reporting period, with a quarter of the overall attacks and more than half of all assassinations recorded countrywide," the report said.

But Ruttig said the attack also highlighted other problems confronting Afghanistan before the transition process, which also includes handing the running of civil institutions and projects over to Afghans, begins.

Not the least of those is the political paralysis that has gripped the country for months.

"The fact that neither NATO nor the Afghans were able to prevent it says something -- that transition needs to be something more than just security," Ruttig said of the hotel attack.

"Security forces are only part of transition. There also needs to be a strengthening of political institutions and, at the moment, the parliamentary crisis has brought politics to a standstill," he told Reuters.

Last week, a special poll court set up by a decree by President Hamid Karzai overturned the results for a quarter of the seats in parliament from elections last year, effectively throwing out 62 MPs who had been declared winners.

The move, and the court itself, have been branded unconstitutional and illegal by Afghan and Western officials and observers. Critics have said the court was set up by Karzai to further his own political agenda and silence opposition.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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Car bomb outside Afghan clinic kills at least 35 (AP)

By RAHIM FAIEZ and SOLOMON MOORE, Associated Press Rahim Faiez And Solomon Moore, Associated Press – Sat?Jun?25, 10:49?am?ET

KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber blew up his sport utility vehicle outside a small clinic in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, bringing the building down on those inside, Afghan authorities said. At least 35 people were reported killed.

Would-be rescuers were frantically digging through the rubble in search of survivors trapped in the collapsed 10-bed clinic, said Mohammad Zaref Nayebkhail, the provincial health director.

The Taliban, authors of many bombings in this war-ravaged land, denied responsibility for this one. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the movement, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that "this attack was not done by our fighters."

Health Director Nayebkhail said guards had tried to prevent the attacker from driving his SUV into the medical compound, in the mountainous Azra district of Logar province, 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Kabul.

"The driver didn't stop and he entered the compound and reached the main building of the health center, where the truck detonated," he said.

Nayebkhail said at least 35 people were killed and at least 53 were wounded in the blast.

He said an Afghan army helicopter was dispatched to the area to deliver medical supplies and to ferry survivors to other hospitals. He said the clinic had recently been expanded to meet the health needs of the far-flung district's population.

Late Friday, another blast — this one caused by a bicycle rigged with explosives — had ripped through a bazaar in the Khanabad district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 people, including a police officer. At least 24 people were wounded in the attack, according to an Interior Ministry statement.

The bombings were the latest episodes in a recent escalation of violence in Afghanistan. They followed President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that he plans to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. NATO officials say Afghan armed forces will be ready to take over more security duties, and by 2014 the Afghan government will be prepared for full sovereignty.

The French government reported, meanwhile, that a French soldier was killed after coming under fire from insurgents while on a reconnaissance mission east of Kabul.

The death brings to 47 the number of NATO service members killed in June, and to more than 200 those killed this year, slightly fewer than last year's six-month total.

But as violence raged in the provinces, Kabul plunged deeper into a constitutional crisis as Afghanistan's legislature, upset over a controversial electoral investigation, passed a no-confidence resolution on Saturday against the nation's most senior judges, two days after doing the same for the attorney general.

Both votes were protests of the findings of a special investigative tribunal that invalidated the victories of 62 lawmakers because of alleged improper voting procedures and fraud.

The tribunal was requested by the attorney general, endorsed by the supreme court and approved by President Hamid Karzai.

Some parliament members characterize its findings as an unconstitutional power grab by Karzai and his appointees.

Two-term parliament member Fawza Kofi, not among those named in the tribunal's report, supported the no-confidence votes.

"The tribunal didn't deal with any criminal issues, rather it just invalidated the votes of the people," she said.

She acknowledged the parliamentary vote was largely symbolic, since the body has no power to remove the judges or attorney general. Abdul Malik Kamawi, chief executive of the supreme court, said the votes were unconstitutional and would be ignored.

Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullah Nazery also dismissed the no-confidence votes as illegitimate, since some of the lawmakers had been discredited by the special tribunal. Nazery said his office will refer the tribunal's findings to the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, which will have the final word on whether to replace the lawmakers.

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