Taliban inmates break out of Afghan prison.

Taliban inmates break out of Afghan prison.

KABUL | AP | 21 April 2014 ::  An official says three Taliban insurgents escaped from a prison in northern Afghanistan using weapons smuggled into the facility in a jailbreak that killed three police guards.

A spokesman for the Faryab provincial government, Ahmad Jawad Dedar, said on Friday that the breakout took place the previous night. A fourth inmate who was also trying to escape was killed in a shootout with security forces.

Dedar says the fugitives are low-level Taliban operatives who were jailed for planting roadside bombs. The four inmates launched their breakout during the nightly count of prisoners, throwing several grenades and shooting guards with at least one pistol.

Dedar said authorities have launched a search for the three fugitives and are investigating how the weapons were smuggled into the prison.( Courtesy : Dawn )

Twin blasts kill 29 in Lebanese city of Tripoli.

Twin blasts kill 29 in Lebanese city of Tripoli.

Hezbollah condemns attacks outside two mosques in the northern city; health minister says over 350 wounded

TRIPOLI | Lebanon  | 23 Aug 2013 ::  Twin car bombs exploded outside mosques in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli Friday, killing at least 29 people, wounding over 350 and wreaking major destruction in the country’s second largest city, Lebanese Health Ministry officials said.

Footage aired on local TV showed thick, black smoke billowing over the city and bodies scattered beside burning cars in scenes reminiscent of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war

The blasts hit amid soaring tensions in Lebanon as a result of Syria’s civil war, which has sharply polarized the country along sectarian lines and between supporters and opponents of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It was the second such bombing in just over a week, showing the degree to which the tiny country is being consumed by the raging war next door.

Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, has seen frequent clashes between Sunnis and Alawites, a Shiite offshoot sect to which Assad belongs. But the city itself has rarely seen such explosions in recent years.

Friday’s blasts mark the first time in years that such explosions have targeted Sunni strongholds and were bound to raise sectarian tensions in the country to new levels. It was also the most powerful and deadliest in Tripoli since the end of the civil war.(Courtesy:Times of Israel)

Roadside bombs kill 6 Afghan children

Roadside bombs kill 6 Afghan children.

KABUL |AP| 04 Jul 2013 :: Roadside bombs killed four young girls and two schoolboys in Afghanistan on Thursday while a police inspector was gunned down on her way to work, officials said. 

The girls, aged 10 to 12 years, had been sent by their families to a river to fetch some water for a wedding that was being held in a home on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, Helmand governor's spokesman Ummar Zawaq said. 

The bomb went off alongside a footpath through a field the girls had taken to make their way back home, Zawaq said. 

Also in Lashkar Gah on Thursday morning, two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a female police inspector who was being taken to work by her son-in-law on his motorcycle, Zawaq said. Inspector Islam Bibi was rushed to the hospital with her wounds but died there about an hour later, he said. Her son-in-law was also wounded. 

And in the eastern province of Paktika, two schoolboys were killed on their way walking home from classes in the afternoon when they triggered a roadside bomb, the governor's office said in a statement. 

Meanwhile, the Nato-led coalition said one of its service members was killed in fighting Thursday in western Afghanistan. It gave no further details. 

Violence this year has matched its worst levels in nearly 12 years of war. According to the most recent figures from the interior ministry, 180 civilians were killed across Afghanistan last month. 

In the same time frame, 299 police officers and 753 militants were killed, the ministry said. The defense ministry did not have similar figures for the Afghan army. 

In other violence Thursday, 11 Taliban militants were killed in two different operations in the province of Lowgar, just south of Kabul, and seven others were wounded, the ministry of defense said. One Afghan soldier was also killed.(Courtesy:The Times of India)