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Coalition air strikes kill 76 Afghan civilians

AFP, Kabul

A US-led coalition military operation in western Afghanistan on Friday killed 76 civilians, including 50 children and 19 women, the Afghan interior ministry said.

The coalition confirmed it carried out an operation that included air strikes in the western province of Herat but said 30 Taliban rebels were killed only and said it knew of no civilian deaths. The Afghan defence ministry meanwhile gave yet another toll-five civilians and 25 rebels dead. It was impossible to independently verify what happened in volatile Shindand district, but the conflicting reports highlight the difficulty in establishing facts in the mounting clashes between troops and rebels.

"Seventy-six people, all civilians and most of them women and children, were martyred during the operation by coalition forces in Shindand district of Herat province," the ministry said in a statement.

The dead were "19 women, seven men and the rest children all under 15 years of age," it said.

"The interior ministry, while expressing its profound regret because of this incident which happened by accident, has sent a delegation of 10 people to the area and more details will be announced once the investigation is completed," the statement said.

If the death toll is confirmed it would be one of the highest for civilians in the battle to fight the extremist Taliban, who were ousted during a US-led invasion in 2001.

The ministry said an unknown number of civilians were also wounded, with some of them in a critical condition. The police chief for western Afghanistan, Akramuddin Yawer, had also said 76 people were killed in the incident and 15 houses were destroyed in strikes. "Taliban are included but their number is unknown," he said.

But the coalition said 30 insurgents were killed in clashes and air strikes that followed an ambush on Afghan National Army (ANA) and coalition troops as they were going to arrest a Taliban commander.

"The ANA and coalition forces killed 30 insurgents," it said, adding a "known" Taliban commander was among the dead.

Two civilians were wounded. "No other civilian or friendly casualties were reported," the coalition said.

Asked about the ministry statement, US First Lieutenant Nathan Perry told AFP: "I definitely do not have any reports of a large amount of civilian casualties-and we don't have any reports of civilian casualties at all." In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman could not account for the Afghan interior ministry claims, saying "the coalition remains confident in our reports that were released earlier today."

The Afghan army said five civilians-three women and two children-had died. "Planes bombed the area and in the result 25 Taliban were killed including two famous commanders," defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP separately. "Unfortunately, five civilians were killed and one woman and a boy were wounded."

Military operations and rebel attacks have increased in the summer with a Taliban-led insurgency growing steadily despite the efforts of nearly 70,000 international troops. It has been a particularly bloody week for international troops with 10 French soldiers killed Monday in the deadliest ground fighting for the foreign forces since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban that brought international troops to the country.

Eight foreign soldiers including three Poles and three Canadians died in various incidents on Wednesday, most of them in bomb strikes.

Another was killed in a bomb blast in eastern Afghanistan Friday, the coalition said in a statement that gave few details. Most soldiers in the east are American.

In other violence, police in the southern province of Uruzgan said that 11 Taliban were killed overnight after they attacked Afghan police and soldiers.

And two Afghan soldiers were killed in Badghis province Friday when their vehicles hit a bomb, an Afghan army officer said.

Anti-India sentiment grows amid Kashmir unrest

AP, Srinagar

The crowd's hostility was unmistakable. Each time they passed Indian soldiers, thousands chanted the name of one of South Asia's most violent Islamic groups.

"India, your death will come. Lashkar will come," they chanted, harking back to the early 1990s when militants from groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba roamed this predominantly Muslim region's towns and villages and even Kashmir's peaceful separatists openly defied New Delhi.

Those days seem more like the present than the past in Kashmir, where a dispute over 99 acres of land for a Hindu shrine has prompted protests by hundreds of thousands, reviving the separatist movement and threatening to further undermine the India-Pakistan peace process.

While the militants may still be underground, a new generation of Muslim Kashmiris has loudly taken up the separatists' old slogan of "azadi" - freedom - from Hindu-majority India, long viewed by many here as an occupying power.

The latest and largest protest came Friday as an estimated 200,000 people streamed into central Srinagar, shutting down this city once famed for its cool summer weather and sweeping Himalayan panoramas.

They chanted "Death to India!" and "We want freedom!" while soldiers and police kept their distance, hoping to avoid a repeat of clashes that have killed at least 34 people in recent weeks.

Such scenes have pierced the notion, widely held throughout India just months ago, that a semblance of normal life was returning to Kashmir after 19 years of rebellion. Militant attacks were down, separatist politicians appeared sidelined and tourists were back lounging on houseboats on Srinagar's Dal Lake.

That is all gone now, pushed aside by the anger at Indian rule that many here say was subsumed but never extinguished.

"This is a freedom movement, a people's movement," said Salman Ahmed, a 27-year-old protester. "We are united to fight India until we get freedom."

The timing could not be worse. Divided between India and Muslim Pakistan, Kashmir lies at the heart of their rivalry. The unrest is straining already tense relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who have fought two wars over Kashmir.

Suicide attack kills at least 6 police in Pakistan

AP, Peshawar

A suicide car bombing at a police station in northwestern Pakistan killed at least six officers on Saturday - the latest in a string of such attacks claimed by Taliban militants, security officials said.

The violence underscored the many challenges ahead for the two main parties in Pakistan's ruling coalition - traditional rivals who united to force Pervez Musharraf from power less than one week ago.

The car bombing came two days after Taliban militants carried out one of Pakistan's deadliest-ever terrorist attacks - twin suicide bombings that killed 67 people at the country's biggest weapons manufacturing complex. Though the five-month-old government initially sought to tame militants in peace negotiations, it has in recent weeks become entangled in increasing fighting with hard-line Islamic movements along its border.

The attack in Swat, where Islamic militants have been battling security forces to pressure the government to enforce Taliban-style laws, killed six and wounded several others, said local police official Mohib Ullahn.

A Taliban spokesman, Muslim Khan, immediately claimed responsibility and vowed more attacks if the government did not halt army operations in the area, once a popular tourist destination.

"We had warned the government to target police and the army if it didn't stop operations against us in Swat," he told The Associated Press by telephone. "The government ignored and continued attacking our position."

Also Saturday, a civilian died and three were wounded in the Bari Kot village in Swat when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle, Khan said.

Iraq-US pact puts troop pullout by 2011

AFP, Baghdad

Negotiators have finalised a deal which will see the complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by 2011, ending an eight-year occupation, the top official in the Iraqi team told AFP on Friday.

Under the 27-point deal all American combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by next June, said negotiator Mohammed al-Haj Hammoud.

The agreement has already been approved by US President George W. Bush and now needs to be endorsed by Iraqi leaders, he added.

But while Bush seemed poised to reverse his previous opposition to a target date for withdrawal, the White House poured cold water on Iraq's account of the deal saying details had yet to be worked out.

"There are still discussions ongoing," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. "It's not done until it's done." Hammoud said Baghdad and Washington had agreed to "withdraw the US troops from Iraq by end of 2011."

"The combat troops will withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 2009. Both the parties have agreed on this," he added. "The negotiators' job is done. Now it is up to the leaders."

The security pact will decide the future of US forces in Iraq once the present UN mandate, which provides the legal framework for the presence of foreign forces in Iraq, expires in December.

Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had agreed last November to formalise such an agreement by July 31.

US, NKorea hold talks to break nuclear impasse

AFP, New York

The United States and North Korea held talks Friday to break a deadlock over measures to verify Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program that could pave the way for removing the hardline communist state from a terrorism blacklist.

The talks in New York between Sung Kim, the State Department's top Korea expert, and North Korean officials were a follow-up to a meeting held about three weeks ago in Beijing over verification of the North's nuclear program declared in June, officials said.

"Obviously, they are going to talk about the six-party talks, obviously recent discussions about the verification package, which we have been calling on the North Koreans to produce," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood before the talks. Asked whether Pyongyang was set to agree on a proposed verification protocol, Wood said Sung Kim was "going to assess where things are with North Korea in his conversations with North Korean officials.

"The US government wants to see this verification package as soon as possible so that we can move forward with this delisting," he added. Washington has said it would remove North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorist List if Pyongyang agreed to a comprehensive verification protocol proposed at the last six-nation talks aimed at disbanding the state's atomic weapons arsenal.

But Pyongyang wanted the United States to remove it from the blacklist first as part of what it called an "action-for-action" plan.

Speculation mounts that McCain has chosen Rumney for VP

AP, Washington

Mark Halperin set off tremors in the political world last night by reporting via two Republicans that John McCain had settled on Mitt Romney to be his running mate.

Top sources in McCainworld, though, say this morning that no final decision has been made. There are mixed signals at this point as to whether Romney has emerged as the favorite. That seems to be the "body language" from the small group of aides who McCain is consulting on the decision, a GOP source says. And that interpretation was reinforced when word spread among Romney loyalists last night that the vice presidential rollout tour included Michigan.

But Michigan is a battleground, and the tour also includes a stop in the swing state of Ohio a week from today. Making matters more confusing, Politico has learned that McCain will visit suburban St. Louis for a major rally with Romney and his still-bitter primary nemesis Mike Huckabee on Sunday, Aug. 31, the day before the start of the GOP convention.

Top Missouri Republicans yesterday received the invitation for a rally featuring McCain and his two top primary challengers. They'll be joined by country star John Rich at a minor league baseball stadium in O'Fallon, Mo., about 35 miles west of St. Louis.

Nepal forms post-royal govt under new Maoist PM

AFP, Kathmandu

Nepal swore in its first post-royal government Friday with Maoist leader Prachanda as prime minister, ending weeks of political deadlock.

The Maoists-who waged a decade-long insurgency until a 2006 peace deal-emerged as Nepal's most potent political force after convincingly winning landmark polls in April.

Prachanda led the oath-taking where new ministers pledged "to remain faithful to the nation and my countrymen." The ultra-leftist Maoists, centre-left Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and another political group formed an alliance and agreed on distribution of ministerial posts.

Politicians from the UML did not swear in after an 11th hour disagreement over who would be deputy prime minister, a Maoist official said.

"We will extend the ministerial cabinet after the prime minister returns from his Beijing visit. Members from the UML will get sworn in then," Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara told AFP.

Prachanda was due to fly to Beijing on Saturday and make his first foray on the international stage to attend the Olympics closing ceremony and meet Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The formation of the government follows the Himalayan country's abolition of its unpopular 240-year-old monarchy two months ago after the Maoists won just over a third of the seats in the new constitutional assembly.