Nato soldier, two dozen rebels killed in Afghanistan

KABUL: Nato warplanes pounded insurgent strongholds near the Afghan capital, killing two dozen rebels, the alliance said Thursday, as a foreign soldier lost his life in violence elsewhere in the country.

The soldier, whose nationality was not revealed, died in a Taliban-style improvised bomb attack on Wednesday, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

The death brings to 437 the number of international troops who have died in the Afghan war so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the independent website icasualties.org.

Many of those deaths have been caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which are the main weapon in the Taliban’s arsenal, along with suicide bomb attacks and targeted assassinations.

ISAF said two dozen rebels were killed, also on Wednesday, in air raids on their hideouts in the province of Logar, just south of Kabul, which is marked by Taliban violence.

The raids were part of an operation launched in the restive province to capture a Taliban commander, Qari Muir, the multinational force said in a statement.

“During the operation, 12 Taliban insurgents, including Muir, were killed,” it said.

The rebel commander “formerly held several Taliban positions including deputy shadow governor, military commander and intelligence chief for Logar province,” it added.

Elsewhere in Logar, the alliance’s intelligence pinpointed a gathering of Taliban insurgents preparing for an attack, the statement said. The gathering was targeted from the air and nine rebels were killed, it added.

Three other militants were killed in another airstrike, the force said. The toll could not independently verified.

There are 141,000 international troops in Afghanistan fighting under the command of US General David Petraeus to quell the insurgency, concentrated in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. —AFP

Over four million rendered homeless by floods, says UN

ISLAMABAD: The number of people rendered homeless by the devastating floods in Pakistan has risen to more than four million, the United Nations said on Thursday, making the critical task of securing greater amounts of aid more urgent.

The UN had earlier said that two million people had lost their homes in the worst floods in Pakistan's history, which began nearly three weeks ago.

Aid agencies have been pushing for more funding as they try to tackle major problems such as food supplies, lack of shelter outbreaks of diseases.

The economic costs of the floods are expected to run into the billions of dollars.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it expected to contribute at least $2 billion to help.

“While the assessment will take several weeks to complete, the damages so far are staggering,” said the Manila-based ADB in a statement on its website.

Aid funding has improved, with nearly half the $459 million needed to fund initial relief efforts secured after days of lobbying donors. But the situation on the ground remained grim.

“The donors are improving their contribution. They are giving more and more. The response of donors to this crisis is getting better and better but it is still inadequate,” UN spokesman Maurizio Giuliano told Reuters.

Child trafficking is a big business in Pakistan. Giuliano expressed concern that since the floods have made millions homeless, children were at an even great risk of being forced into the trade.

“You may have families who take drastic measures because they need to survive. So even though we don't have any suggestion that it is happening already, this can be a concern,” he said.

Only a small minority of the six million Pakistanis desperate for food and clean water have received help after floods that have killed up to 1,600 people.

“According to rough estimates, over four million people in Sindh and Punjab still do not have a roof on their head,” said Giuliano.

“This situation is of high concern”.

Flood victims are turning on each other as aid is handed out and anger is rising over the government's perceived sluggish response to the crisis.

Hundreds of villages are isolated, highways and bridges have been cut in half by floods and hundreds of thousands of cattle — the livelihoods of many villagers — have drowned.

Many hospitals and medical camps are overwhelmed and fears are rising for possible epidemics of diseases and viruses such as malaria.

Surgeon shot dead in Karachi’s Nazimabad area

KARACHI: An orthopaedic surgeon was shot dead near the board office traffic intersection in Nazimabad on Wednesday afternoon, police said.

They added that Dr Javed Shakoor, son of Abdul Shakoor, was the owner of M.O. Memon Hospital located in Husainabad and resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal.

The police said that the 50-year-old doctor was heading to Nazimabad from the hospital in his car (AHQ-177) when unidentified men sprayed him with bullets at 1.15pm.

Nazimabad SHO Jehanzeb told Dawn that the victim suffered five bullet wounds in his chest and shoulder from the right side. “The victim was rushed to the nearby Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival,” he said.

The police later collected seven spent bullet casings from the crime-scene, the SHO said, adding that the assailants used a 9mm pistol in the attack.

“It is not yet clear if the attackers were riding a motorcycle or travelling in a car,” the official said. Similarly, he said, the police were not certain about their number, as eyewitness had not shared any information with the police so far despite the fact that the attack was carried out on a main road in the presence of dozens of people.

The official said the family had not lodged the FIR, telling the police that they would do so after the burial of the victim.

The deputy inspector-general of the west zone of police in the city, Sultan Khawaja, said there seemed to be a sectarian motive behind the killing, but other possibilities could also not be ruled out at this stage.

Security guard, cashier killed

A security guard and a cashier were killed in the Pak Colony area on Wednesday over what police described as a property dispute.

The police said that the attackers did not deprive the victims of Rs900,000, which the latter had collected from different shops as outstanding dues.

An official at the Pak Colony police station said that Wazir Shah, the cashier of the pharmacy company in SITE, and the private guard, Murad Gul, were returning in a car after collecting payments from different shops when unidentified persons intercepted them near the Bismillah Hotel and sprayed them with bullets before fleeing.

The police official said that the victims suffered two bullets each in the chest and neck and died before they could he shifted to the hospital.

A 9mm pistol was used in the targeted killing, according to the investigators.

Liaquatabad SP Naveed Khwaja said initial investigations indicated that the killings were carried out over a property dispute.

Till the filing of this report, the FIR of the murder had not been registered.

Diversion of water wreaked havoc, says minister

HYDERABAD: A minister, taking exception to deliberate diversion of flood water in all directions, has called for the formation of judicial commission to probe into it and bring to book those responsible for creating havoc in Upper Sindh which displaced tens of thousands of people.

Sindh Information Technology Minister Raza Haroon while assuring boarding and lodging facilities to the upcoming IDPs said that his party, the MQM, would do everything to make them feel at home.

Mr Raza who is also a member of the MQM’s Coordination Committee told this to journalists during an Iftar party in the zonal office here on Tuesday.

He further proposed of taking on commission’s board, experts and not those having a role in the present crisis. He said that the recommendations of the commission should be implemented to avoid the replication of the present scenario. He advised the government against showing any leniency in this regard as it would encourage the trouble-makers to carry on with their nefarious acts.

Mr Raza demanded inclusion of high court judges in the commission whose responsibility would be to dig out each and every aspect minutely and unmask those feudal lords and irrigation officials who are responsible for diverting flood water towards the land of poor to save their own farms. Besides, the landlords didn’t offer any help to displaced people, he said.

He said that his party would take up the issue in Sindh Cabinet and provincial assembly session.

It is because of the sheer negligence of irrigation officials that such a large scale of people had been rendered homeless and lost all their assets - house, livestock and land besides getting separated from their nick and near ones.

Expressing dissatisfaction over the performance of Irrigation Department, he said that the officials did carry out reinforcement of embankments, but only on papers. The minister informed that the MQM volunteers were guarding the embankments as fears of the passing of 60,000 cusecs of water from Korti barrage was still daunting them.

The minister reiterated his party’s resolve of taking care of the IDPs making to Hyderabad and Karachi and added: “They are our brothers and sisters and we will do all we can, to make them comfortable.”

Earlier, Mr Raza along with provincial minister Zubair Ahmed Khan, MNA Salahuddin and MQM zonal in-charge Mohammad Sharif visited embankments of the River Indus.

Last US combat brigade pulls out of Iraq: US media

WASHINGTON: The last US combat brigade pulled out of Iraq and crossed into Kuwait almost seven and a half years after the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, US media reported Wednesday.

Television footage showed an NBC reporter travelling with the fourth Stryker Brigade, second Infantry Division crossing the border around midnight local time to be followed in the coming hours by the rest of the brigade.

But the US military said there were still several thousand more US troops in Iraq that had to go before the drawdown was complete.

When it does the official name of the US mission in Iraq will change from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation New Dawn,” said Major General Stephen Lanza in an interview with MSNBC.

The pullout comes just one day after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded army recruitment center in Baghdad killing 59 people, as violence coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan raged across Iraq.

The attack, blamed on Al-Qaeda and the deadliest this year, wounded at least another 100 people and came a day after Iraq's two main political parties suspended talks over the formation of a new government.

News of the milestone withdrawal was also carried by Al-Jazeera and US media such as The Washington Post, CNN and The Los Angeles Times, many of which had reporters embedded with the departing troops.

Lanza, the military spokesman, said there were still nearly 56,000 US troops in Iraq, but the number would fall to 50,000 by the end of the month.

“And we'll continue to go through our responsible drawdown to meet that drawdown by 1 September. It is about a transition to a change of mission, going from combat operations to stability operations,” he said.

US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, live on MSNBC as the footage was shown, described the end of combat operations as a “historic moment,” but vowed that America's long-term commitment was unwavering.

“The last thing that we want to see is an occasion where we have to send troops back into Iraq yet again so we are ending the combat phase of our involvement in Iraq for a second time.

“We're not ending our involvement in Iraq. We will have important work to do. This is a transition. This is not the end of something. It's a transition to something different. We have a long-term commitment to Iraq.” Crowley said that after spending one trillion dollars in Iraq and with 4,400 lives lost, the conflict had come “at high expense.” ”We've invested heavily in Iraq and have to do everything we can to preserve that investment to integrate Iraq along with the neighborhood into a much more peaceful situation that serves their interests as well as ours.” In a letter dated August 18 and posted on the White House website, President Barack Obama also hailed the end of combat operations but made no mention of the final combat troops leaving.

“Shortly after taking office, I put forward a plan to end the war in Iraq responsibly,” the letter said.

“Today, I'm pleased to report that -- thanks to the extraordinary service of our troops and civilians in Iraq -- our combat mission will end this month, and we will complete a substantial drawdown of our troops. ”While most reports suggested the pullout of the fourth Brigade would take only a few hours, The Los Angeles Times said it would take three days for the 360 military vehicles and 1,800 soldiers to get down the road from Baghdad, through the Shiite south and into Kuwait.

The Pentagon would not confirm it was the pullout of the final combat troops, but has long said the number of American soldiers in Iraq would fall to 50,000 by the end of the month when combat missions officially end.

All US troops are supposed to leave the country by the end of next year, according to the terms of a bilateral security pact, and Obama has insisted the ongoing withdrawal is on schedule and will not be altered.

The US troop pullouts have come despite warnings from senior Iraqi politicians and officers about the dangers of an early exit given the security situation and political uncertainty.

Iraq's top military officer told AFP last week on the sidelines of a defense ministry conference in Baghdad that American forces may be needed in the conflict-wracked nation for a further decade.

“At this point, the withdrawal is going well, because they are still here, ”Lieutenant General Babaker Zerbari said.

“But the problem will start after 2011 -- the politicians must find other ways to fill the void after 2011. If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020.” The pullout also coincided with the arrival of James Jeffrey, the new US ambassador to Iraq, who presented his diplomatic credentials Wednesday to the conflict-torn nation's head of state, President Jalal Talabani. – AFP

Two dead, 90 missing in China mudslides

BEIJING: Devastating mudslides in southwest China have claimed their first two victims and left 90 others missing, as experts in other parts of the country warn of more disasters to come, state media said Thursday.

Torrents of mud slammed into homes in the remote Puladi township in Yunnan province in the early hours of Wednesday when residents were sleeping, leaving dozens missing and prompting a large-scale rescue effort.

Photos published in state newspapers showed rescuers laying down planks on a 300-metre (yard) wide sea of mud which had buried at least 21 houses along with their inhabitants.

“The downpour, coupled with howling wind, was terrifying. My daughter, son and I did not dare sleep, but the mudslide took away my son anyway,” Yang Guihua, her voice trembling, was quoted as saying by the official China Daily.

Yang's nine-year-old son is still missing, the report said.

More than 1,100 rescuers were searching for the missing, mainly mine employees and local villagers. The mudslides left another 38 people injured, including 10 seriously hurt, the official People's Daily said.

Local weather authorities have predicted more rain in the area over the next few days, further complicating rescue efforts.

The latest mudslides come after at least 1,287 people were killed in mudslides 10 days ago in the northwestern province of Gansu, which virtually split the town of Zhouqu in two, leaving nearly 460 more missing.

The neighbouring province of Sichuan, which is only just recovering from the huge 2008 earthquake that left nearly 87,000 dead or missing, has also been badly hit by torrential summer downpours.

At least 15 people there have been killed in mudslides, and hundreds more have been evacuated.

Qiao Jianping, a researcher with the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, said hazards sparked by the 2008 quake could last more than a decade, according to the China Daily.

The mudslides in Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan are the latest in a string of weather-related disasters across China in a summer of heavy rains that have triggered the country's worst flooding in a decade.

More than 2,100 people have so far been left dead or missing and 12 million evacuated nationwide, not including the toll from the Zhouqu disaster, according to government figures. – AFP

ADB to offer flood-hit Pakistan $2 bln loan

SINGAPORE: The Asian Development Bank will offer Pakistan a $2 billion emergency loan to help repair the damage to infrastructure from the worst ever floods to hit the country, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

It quoted the bank's director-general for central and west Asia, Juan Miranda, as saying the bank would also set up a trust fund to channel donor funds for reconstruction.

The United Nations said earlier that nearly half the $459 million needed to fund initial relief efforts had been secured after days of lobbying donors and warnings that the country faces a spiralling humanitarian catastrophe.

But only a small minority of the six million Pakistanis desperate for food and clean water have received help after floods that have killed up to 1,600 people and made two million homeless.

Miranda said he would meet President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday to discuss terms of the concessionary loan.

Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, said the cost of rebuilding could reach $15 billion. – Reuters