War News for Friday, May 21, 2010

Elsewhere, a NATO soldier was killed Friday by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said without identifying him by nationality.


Reported security incidents

Diyala Prv:
#1: Gunmen wearing military uniform stormed a house, killing four people from one family and wounding one other in the south of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, a Diyala operations commander said.


Diwaniya:
#1: A military intelligence officer’s brother was killed in east of Diwaniya city, a police source said on Friday. “Three gunmen killed a military intelligence officer’s brother in front of his house late Thursday (May 20) in al-Joumhoury neighborhood in east of Diwaniya,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.


Mosul:
#1: Gunmen shot dead two policemen at a police checkpoint in central Mosul, police said.

#2: Gunmen killed a civilian in western Mosul, police said.

#3: Gunmen wounded two civilians during an attack on an army patrol in western Mosul, police said.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: Also Friday, a roadside bomb exploded in Afghanistan’s main southern city of Kandahar, killing one civilian and wounding three children, an official said. The early morning blast appeared to target an Afghan intelligence service vehicle that drove down a main road in Kandahar city, said Abdul Ali, an intelligence official who was at the scene. Instead, an elderly man took the brunt of the blast — his body could be seen lying in the street. Three children were injured in the attack and taken to hospitals, he said. The intelligence vehicle was damaged but no one inside was wounded, Ali said.

#2: Elsewhere, seven insurgents including one would-be suicide car bomber launched an attack on an Afghan border police station in Paktika province on the frontier with Pakistan. Police opened fire as the bomber tried to enter the grounds of the station, police chief Dawlat Khan said. Officers killed the bomber before he could detonate the explosives-laden vehicle. Three other militants outside the vehicle opened fire but were killed in a 30-minute gunbattle. Three others escaped. One policeman and two civilians were killed and one policeman was wounded, Khan said.

#3: Taliban militants strapped explosives to two men accused of being US spies and blew than up at a public execution in northwest Pakistan, intelligence officials and residents said on Friday. The killings took place on Thursday evening in North Waziristan, a lawless al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary on the Afghan border where the United States has stepped up attacks with missile-firing drone aircraft, fuelling militant fears of spies. Five masked militants paraded the hand-cuffed men before dozens of people in the Datta Kheil area and accused them of passing information to the United States on targets for its CIA-operated pilotless drone aircraft. "They strapped explosives around their bodies and then blew them up," a Pakistani intelligence official in the region told Reuters by telephone.

#4: Three militants were killed and two others injured when security forces raided a militant hideout in Matta area of Swat Valley, Xinhua news agency said citing TV reports. Automatic weapons, heavy arms and explosives were recovered from the hideout.

#5: In Upper Orakzai area, eight militants were killed and 10 injured in clashes with security forces. Sources said two army personnel were also injured in the fighting.


DoD: Lance Cpl. Patrick Xavier Jr.

DoD: Staff Sgt. Shane S. Barnard