Nur al-Cubicle

A blog on the current crises in the Middle East and news accounts unpublished by the US press. Daily timeline of events in Iraq as collected from stories and dispatches in the French and Italian media: Le Monde (Paris), Il Corriere della Sera (Milan), La Repubblica (Rome), L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut) and occasionally from El Mundo (Madrid).

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Big Trouble in Bargi Malal

From Le Monde

"At least 24 people were killed and 35 wounded in a suicide carbombing in southern Afghanistan. The bombing targeted a police vehicle in the bazaar of Deh Rawood in the Province of Oruzgan...A dozen shops were destroyed in the blast. Most victims were merchants and young street vendors...

Two women were murdered Saturday night in Ghazni [capital of Ghazni Province] by the Taliban, who accused them of working for the police...

Violent clashes between insurgents and Afghan and international security forces are ongoing in eastern Afghanistan. Insurgents attacked two police command posts after three days of violent combat in the Bargi Matal district of Nurestan Province. According to the provincial governor, "seventy police were sent in as reinforcements but a 12-hour march was required to reach the location...The entire district may fall to the Taliban if more reinforcements are not deployed...

Insurgents also attacked NATO forces 50 km southwest of Bargi. ISAF spokesman Mike Finney says combat is continuing...."

Meanwhile, the BBC reports things are heading downhill in neighboring Konar Province: "Nine US soldiers have been killed in clashes with Taliban militants...The small American Combat Outpost in Dara-I-Pech district of Konar Province came under heavy fire at around 04:30 local time...The fighting is close to where US forces were accused of killing 47 civilians in an air strike in Nangarhar Province a week ago."

Do you think this puts pressure on Bush to redeploy US troops from Iraq to Afghanistan before September?