Afghanistan

BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she saw no need to change parliamentary mandates that set limits on the number of troops her government can send to Afghanistan despite mounting pressure from NATO allies.

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) — United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon led international condemnation of a suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed as many as 80 people, one of the deadliest attacks since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) — The United Nations condemned “in the strongest terms” the suicide attack that killed about 80 people and injured 50 others in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar Sunday morning.

KABUL, Feb 16 (Reuters) – The death toll from Afghanistan’s harshest winter in recent living memory has hit 926, an official said on Saturday, adding the figure could rise further as access to remote areas improves with the thawing of snow.

ROME – An Italian soldier serving in Afghanistan was killed and another was wounded on Wednesday when gunmen opened fire on them, the Defence Ministry said.

BERLIN – Boosting the number of German troops in Afghanistan and shifting them to the violent south makes no strategic sense and would stretch military equipment to the limit, the main association for German soldiers said.

KABUL – Nearly 150 students and teachers have been killed and nearly 100 schools burnt down in Afghanistan in the last 10 months, the education ministry said on Tuesday, but more children than ever are attending classes.

By the Bush administration’s standards, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was remarkably candid last week: acknowledging that popular opposition in Europe to the Iraq war was making it harder to persuade European governments to send more troops or take more risks to salvage Afghanistan.

Kabul: Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, has been reported missing, senior Afghan officials confirmed on Monday amid speculation that he had been kidnapped. 

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Washington has dismissed an assertion by fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar that the United States has been “defeated” in Afghanistan.