Afghan peace delegation headed to Gitmo for talks (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan's peace council will send a delegation to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay to discuss the possible release of Taliban detainees as a goodwill gesture to boost reconciliation talks with insurgents.

Arsala Rahmani, chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council's committee on prisoners, said Tuesday that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was backing the council's decision to travel to Cuba to seek the release of several prisoners, including Khairullah Khairkhwa, a former Taliban official who has been held at Guantanamo for more than eight years.

Khairkhwa's attorney, Frank Goldsmith, has said he received an e-mail in January from a legal adviser to the peace council, saying the council wanted the detainee released and repatriated to Afghanistan to help with the peace process. The e-mail said Khairkhwa could be repatriated under certain conditions, including that he stay in Kabul, though he wouldn't be in confinement.

Goldsmith said he was working with the legal adviser to prepare a written request that would be sent to the U.S. State Department.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Abdul Wahid Baghrani, a member of the peace council, said participants at last year's national conference, or peace jirga, told the Afghan government that if it wanted to make peace with the Taliban it needed to seek the release of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan near Bagram Air Field.

"If the prisoners are released, this will be a goodwill gesture to the Afghan people," Baghrani said. "It would be a good step for making progress for the peace effort."

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Nine dead in Taliban attack on Afghan bank (AFP)

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) – Nine people were killed and 70 others wounded, including police chiefs, Saturday in an attack claimed by the Taliban on a bank in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan.

Police collecting their salaries were among the dead and Alishah Paktyamwal, police chief of Nangarhar province where Jalalabad is located, plus his deputy were wounded in the attack.

The incident is the latest to target police in Afghanistan, who alongside the army are due to take control of the war-torn country's security from 2014, allowing most international troops to withdraw.

It happened when three Taliban suicide bombers burst into a branch of Kabul Bank in the city and detonated their devices. There was also a hail of gunfire as the attack unfolded.

Baz Mohammad Shirzad, regional health director for eastern Afghanistan, told reporters: "The final toll is that 70 people have been injured and nine killed." The casualties included police, bank staff and civilians, he said.

Shirzad added that he had also asked the Afghan army and international troops to provide extra security at the hospital amid fears of a possible fresh attack there.

Although the fighting is now over, a curfew in the city has been imposed by local police which bans cars from driving around, an AFP reporter said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, which he said was committed by three suicide bombers.

"People were there doing business deals and to receive their salaries," he said. "This attack once again showed the cruel actions of the terrorists who do not want the people of Afghanistan to live in peace."

A medical source speaking on condition of anonymity said the police chief of Nangarhar province where Jalalabad is located, Alishah Paktyamwal, plus his deputy and the city's criminal police chief were slightly hurt.

The source added that other police officers were killed in the attack.

An AFP reporter at the scene said he had heard gunshots and five explosions as the attack unfolded.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said the militant Islamists, who have been fighting international and government forces in Afghanistan for nearly ten years, were responsible.

"Three suicide bombers have entered the Kabul Bank branch in Jalalabad in the section where they pay the army and police salaries. Big casualties have been inflicted," he said.

Eastern Afghanistan is seen as volatile. Nangarhar province borders Pakistan, where the Taliban and other Islamist networks keep rear bases that Washington wants the Pakistani military to destroy to help suffocate the insurgency in Afghanistan.

A total of 12 people including police officers died in attacks in the region Friday, including nine in a car bombing near a district police headquarters in the eastern city of Khost.

Afghan security forces are frequently targets of attacks by the Taliban.

Last Saturday, 19 people including 15 police and an intelligence agent died when suicide bombers armed with guns, grenades and car bombs targeted police headquarters in Afghanistan's de facto southern capital, Kandahar.

The total strength of Afghan police and army has risen by 36 percent in the last year and international military officials expect the number of police to top 120,000 by September.

The Afghan police and army are due to take responsibility for security in their own country from 2014, allowing the bulk of international troops to withdraw.

A limited withdrawal of foreign forces is expected to start from more stable provinces of Afghanistan from July.

There are currently around 140,000 international forces, around two-thirds from the United States, in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, who were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 after the September 11 attacks.

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Afghan police: Suicide bombing in east kills 8 (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber detonated a car rigged with explosives in the eastern Afghan city of Khost Friday morning, killing at least eight people and injuring scores of others, police said.

Elsewhere in the east, more than 30 insurgents were killed in an overnight operation by NATO forces in Kunar province, a hotbed of the insurgency. Also, a NATO service member was killed Friday in an explosion in the south.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing in Khost, which targeted a police station. Two policemen, a patrolman and an officer, were among the dead, said Abdul-Hakim Isaqzai, the police chief of Khost province, which borders Pakistan.

"It was very powerful, It shook Khost city," he said about the blast.

The explosion, in a crowded area of the city, damaged cars, houses and shops and sent a pillar of thick black smoke into the air.

"The blast was very large. It went off in the heart of the city near a police checkpoint," 35-year-old Noorullah of Khost told The Associated Press. "There is broken glass in the residential areas around the bombing, Even people in their houses were injured by broken glass."

Noorullah, who uses one name, said city residents were expressing fear and disappointment about the continuing violence.

"Continually we are facing this disaster," he said, adding that he has little faith in the ability of the Afghan government's peace council to reconcile with insurgents. "The government officials in Khost province — they are so scared. They cannot leave their offices, their compounds, to go out to talk to the people."

President Hamid Karzai's office condemned the attack.

Amir Pacha, director of hospitals in the province, said at least 30 other people, mostly civilians, were wounded in the blast.

In December 2009, a suicide bomber, who was a double agent, killed seven CIA employees at a U.S. intelligence base in Khost.

Farther north along the Afghan-Pakistan border, pro-government security forces on Thursday captured a leader of Hizb-i-Islami, a militant group made up of loyalists of regional warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the coalition said. A suspected insurgent also was captured and a local resident who threatened security forces was killed in the operation in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, NATO added.

The insurgent leader, who was captured, led a group of insurgents responsible for bomb attacks against coalition and Afghan forces and provided food and shelter to five fighters traveling from Pakistan, NATO said. Weapons, a roadside bomb and narcotics were confiscated at the site.

Even farther north, coalition troops patrolling from the air spotted a group of what they identified to be armed insurgents and fired on them in Ghazi Abad district of Kunar province, kicking off a more than four-hour battle late Thursday that left more than 30 insurgents dead.

The coalition after they opened fire, a large number of armed individuals emerged from a nearby building and they also were targeted and killed.

In southern Afghanistan, a coalition service member died Friday in a roadside bombing, NATO said. The coalition did not disclose any other details about the death, which brings to 17 the number of coalition troops who have died in Afghanistan so far this month.

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Kandahar attack kills 3, injured 26: Afghan official (AFP)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) – Three people were killed, including two policemen, and 26 wounded after an attack claimed by the Taliban on police headquarters in the Afghan city of Kandahar, an official said.
Nine children were among those hurt in the violence, said Zalmai Ayubi, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar, which is in the highly volatile south of the war-torn country.
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