Taliban claim attack on base where Prince Harry stationed

Photo dated 7/9/2012 of Britain's Prince Harry examining the cockpit of an Apache helicopter with a member of his squadron at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, where he will be operating from during his tour of duty as a co-pilot gunner. The prince was unharmed after an attack on the Camp Bastion compound in which two US Marines were killed and several more wounded Saturday Sept. 15, 2012.

  By PATRICK QUINNKABUL, Afghanistan -- The Taliban claimed responsibility Saturday for an attack on a sprawling British base in southern Afghanistan that killed two U.S. Marines and wounded several other troops, saying it was to avenge an anti-Islamic film that insulted the Prophet Muhammad and also because Britain's Prince Harry is serving there.

The U.S.-led NATO coalition said in a statement that nearly 20 insurgents armed with guns, rocket-propelled grenades and explosive vests infiltrated the perimeter of Camp Bastion. The huge British base is adjacent to Camp Leatherneck, which houses U.S. Marine operations in southern Helmand province.

The coalition said the attack, which began shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, killed two NATO service members, wounded several others and damaged multiple aircraft and structures.

Coalition forces returned fire and killed 18 militants. One other insurgent, who was wounded, has been detained and is being given medical treatment, the coalition said. NATO service members, who cleared the base of attackers early Saturday, were still assessing the damage to aircraft and buildings on the air field.

"Despite the damage, there will be no impact to ground or air operations from Camp Bastion," the coalition said. "An investigation is ongoing."

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban, said: "We attacked that base because Prince Harry was also on it and so they can know our anger." The group often tailors its claims to the news of the day.

"Thousands more suicide attackers are ready to give up their lives for the sake of the Prophet," Ahmadi said in a telephone call with The Associated Press.

Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, is based at Camp Bastion. A spokesman for Britain's Ministry of Defense told the AP that Prince Harry was unharmed in the attack, which according to Britain's Press Association took place two kilometers (one mile) from the section of the complex where the prince was located. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

Capt. Harry Wales, as the prince is known in the military, is serving a four-month combat deployment as a gunner on an Apache helicopter. Harry, who turns 28 on Saturday, is expected to start flying Apache missions this week. This is his second tour in Afghanistan.

In its statement, the International Security Assistance Force, NATO's Afghan mission, said insurgents attacked "with both small arms fire and indirect fire killing two ISAF service members and causing damage to buildings and aircraft." Indirect fire usually refers to mortars or rockets.

Jamie Graybeal, a coalition spokesman, confirmed that two U.S. Marines died in the attack, but he said that how they died remained under investigation. Graybeal said two insurgents wearing suicide vests were part of the assaulting force, although he did not say whether they blew themselves up.

It was unclear what the insurgents hoped to accomplish in attacking Camp Bastion, one of the largest and most heavily defended military facilities in Afghanistan.

Bastion is located in a remote desert area northwest of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand. It is the hub for all British operations in the province and along with Leatherneck houses thousands of combat troops and Marines, including Danish and Estonian forces.

Afghanistan's southern region has been a hotbed of the insurgency and attacks against foreign forces occur daily, although the Taliban have largely been routed in its capital and larger towns. Helmand remains an active battlefield between insurgents and NATO forces and for years has been the site of some of the war's bloodiest engagements.

There were few protests against the film in Afghanistan on Friday and Saturday. The largest on Friday involved several hundred people in eastern Nangarhar province. On Saturday, a few hundred of university students protested in the eastern city of Khost, shouting "Death to America" and burning an effigy of President Barack Obama.

"Infidels have insulted our beloved Prophet," said protester Mohammad Abdullah.

The Afghan government has indefinitely blocked YouTube to prevent Afghans from viewing a video clip of the film that was posted on the Internet site, said Khair Mohammad Faizi, a spokesman for the Communication Ministry. He said it will remain blocked until the video is taken down.

Other Google services, including gmail, were also blocked in Afghanistan on Friday and Saturday. Faizi did not comment on this.

In other violence, a police vehicle hit a roadside bomb on Saturday during a routine patrol in Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan, killing a police inspector and wounding two other policemen, according to Kandahar provincial spokesman Jawed Faisal.

Twelve other civilians from two families were killed on Friday when their car hit a roadside bomb in Gereskh district of Helmand province, according to the office of President Hamid Karzai.

Separately, the Afghan parliament on Saturday voted to approve three of four individuals Karzai nominated to fill senior security positions.

The lawmakers approved Assadullah Khalid to lead the intelligence agency despite allegations that he has committed human rights abuses in the past. Khalid was the minister of border and tribal affairs and also has been governor of Kandahar and Ghazni provinces.

Human Rights Watch has reported allegations that forces under Khalid's authority operated a private prison in Kandahar from 2005 to 2008 in which detainees were beaten and tortured with electric shocks. The New York-based group said Khalid also has been accused of corruption and high-level involvement in the country's narcotics trafficking. Khalid has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

The Afghan parliament also approved former Interior Minister Bishmullah Mohammadi as defense minister and Mushtaba Patang, a former police chief in northern Afghanistan, as the new minister of interior.

Azizullah Din Mohammad, a former mayor of the Afghan capital Kabul, was not approved as Khalid's replacement as minister of tribal and border affairs.

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Taliban storm Afghan hotel, kill 18 people

  AMIR SHAHKABUS -- Heavily armed Taliban insurgents killed 18 people - most of them civilians - in an attack Friday on a lakeside hotel just north of Kabul, Afghan officials said.

Insurgents first killed the security guards at the hotel, then stormed inside it and began firing at guests who were dining. Some of the guests escaped while others were held hostage as the attackers battled Afghan security forces who rushed to the scene for the next 12 hours. Kabul police said all five attackers had been shot and killed by midday Friday, ending the standoff.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the incident, the latest in a string of attacks this week that suggest the insurgent group is pushing hard with its summer offensive rather than waiting for international forces to draw down. The strike at the hotel, about a half-hour drive from the capital, was a reminder that the Taliban can still hit very close to the seat of the Afghan government.

Fourteen Afghan civilians, three security guards and an Afghan police officer died in the attack, said Mohammad Zahir, criminal director for Kabul police.

"The attackers entered the hotel and suddenly opened fire on families having a late dinner," Zahir said. "The hotel was crowded. Some of the guests jumped from the window into the hotel yard. They were hiding under trees or any safe place they could find.

"Three of the guests jumped into the lake and hid in the water,' ' he added.

Kabul Police Chief Mohammad Ayub Salangi said the five attackers - armed with machines guns, rocket-propelled grenades and vests laden with explosives - stormed the Spozhmai hotel at Qargha Lake before midnight on Thursday. By midmorning Friday, militants were still fighting Afghan forces, supported by international troops. Gunfire pierced the quiet surroundings of the lake area. Black smoke was rising from the two-story hotel in a wooded area on the bank of the lake. NATO helicopters circled overhead.

"It was around 11:20 p.m. last night when it all started," said Mohammad Ghani, who was at the scene. "It got quiet for a couple of hours and then the fighting stated again."

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the Taliban attacked the hotel because foreigners there were drinking alcohol and participating in other activities banned by Islam, but that was disputed by the Kabul police.

"The Taliban propaganda is saying that there was immoral activity there and that people were drinking alcohol," said Zahir, the criminal director for the Kabul police. "That is totally wrong. These are people who had worked all week and had gone to the lake to have a restful dinner with their families. The view there is very good for relaxation. There is no alcohol."

The hotel, situated on a man-made lake, is a popular place for well-to-do Afghans to spend Thursday night - the beginning of the Afghan weekend - or for picnic excursions on a Friday when paddleboats and horse rides are on offer. Though international workers do go to Qargha lake, Afghans make up the majority of the clientele at the hotels and kebab shops along its shore.

Security at the lake is light compared with targets inside the Afghan capital. While hotels at the lake have armed guards, there are no massive blast walls and security cordons that surround government and military buildings in Kabul. Zahir said only two of the three guards killed at the hotel were armed.

The hotel was a soft target compared with the attacks insurgents have launched inside the city in recent years, including taking over construction sites and firing down on embassies and storming the tightly secured Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul last summer.

The week has been particularly violent in Afghanistan, as insurgents stepped up attacks against international forces. On Wednesday, a suicide bomber attacked U.S. and Afghan forces at a checkpoint in a busy market in the east, killing 21 people, including three U.S. soldiers. The same day, seven Afghan civilians were killed by a roadside bomb.

Those bombings came the day after two attacks in the south in which militants stormed a NATO military base and attacked a police checkpoint. U.S. troops were wounded in the attack on the NATO base, officials said. On Monday, three gunmen dressed in Afghan police uniforms killed one American service member and wounded nine others in Kandahar's Zhari district.

The fighting suggests that the Taliban are not planning to wait for international combat forces to complete their exit from Afghanistan at the end of 2014. The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, has to withdraw 23,000 American troops by the end of September, leaving about 68,000 U.S. military personnel in the country.

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Associated Press Writers Deb Riechmann and Heidi Vogt in Kabul contributed to this report.

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Taliban attack US vehicles in Pakistan

  By RIAZ KHAN and NAHAL TOOSIPESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A Taliban car bomb struck an armored vehicle taking American officials to the U.S consulate in northwest Pakistan on Friday, officials said, in a strike the militants said was in revenge for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Two Americans suffered minor injuries, but one Pakistani passer-by was killed and at least 10 others were wounded in the attack in the city of Peshawar, officials said. The strike was the first on Westerners since the May 2 raid by American commandos on bin Laden's hideout in an army town around three hours from Peshawar.

The Pakistani Taliban, an al-Qaida-allied group behind scores of attacks in recent years, claimed responsibility.

"We say to the Americans and NATO that we will carry out more deadly attacks and we can do it," Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said in a phone call from an undisclosed location. "We had warned that we will avenge the martyrdom of Osama."

The Americans were traveling in two cars from their homes to the heavily protected consulate building when a car bomb exploded nearby, said U.S. Embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez and police in the city. The Americans from the hit car were whisked away from the scene in the second vehicle. The most serious wound was a possible broken hand, he said.

Rodriguez had initially said Friday's attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, based on accounts from eye witnesses. He later called The Associated Press to say it was a planted explosive device of some kind. Pakistani police said it was a car bomb, presumably detonated remotely.

Rodriguez declined to say what job the Americans held. The consulate is home to diplomats, security contractors and - it is widely believed - CIA staff hunting al-Qaida and associated groups.

Both the consulate building and a previous top officer there have been attacked in the past.

The unilateral U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in Abbottabad badly damaged Pakistani-American relations already frayed since January, when a CIA contractor killed two Pakistanis in the city of Lahore. The incident prompted Pakistan to demand a reduction in U.S. military personnel in the country, and infuriated the Pakistani army over what it claims are American spies operating in the country.

Peshawar lies just outside Pakistan's tribal regions, where al-Qaida and the Taliban have bases.

The city has witnessed many of the suicide and other bombings that have scarred Pakistan over the past five years, the vast majority against Pakistani government and security force targets.

Foreigners in Pakistan have also been targeted, but not nearly as much.

Last week, the Pakistani Taliban killed more than 80 Pakistani recruits for a paramilitary border force in double suicide attacks close to Peshawar. They said those blasts were also in revenge for the death of bin Laden.

Pakistani TV footage showed that the car that was hit was a large, sport utility vehicle. It appeared to have veered into a pole and the hood was damaged. Nearby buildings also were damaged in the blast.

In August 2008, Lynne Tracy, then the top U.S. diplomat at the consulate, survived a gun attack on her armored vehicle. In April last year, militants used car bombs and grenades to strike the consulate, killing eight people. None of the dead were U.S. citizens, but several were security guards working for the consulate.

Pakistan is angry it was not warned in advance that the Navy SEALs team would storm bin Laden's compound, and insists it had no idea the terror mastermind was hiding there. U.S. officials have visited Pakistan in recent days to try to patch up differences, and assure Pakistan's continued cooperation in the battle against al-Qaida and allies Islamist militant groups.

One topic likely under intense discussion was the issue of U.S. drone-fired missiles on militants hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. Pakistan publicly denounces the attacks, but U.S. diplomatic cables released recently by WikiLeaks indicate that in private, Pakistan's civilian leaders back the missile strikes.

Accounts of U.S. diplomatic cables showing there is some private support for the strikes among Pakistan's military leaders, dating back to 2008, were published Friday by the English-language Dawn newspaper in Pakistan.

The accounts describe meetings between U.S. officials and Pakistani leaders that year. In one, then-U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson wrote that Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani requested "continuous Predator coverage of the conflict area" in South Waziristan, where the military was moving against insurgents.

Although the paper said "Predator coverage" could imply surveillance drones as opposed to missile-armed ones, it said the response by the American officials suggested the Pakistanis were looking for U.S. strikes.

Also Friday, a bomb exploded inside a moving minibus in the troubled Orakzai tribal region, killing five passengers, government official Salim Khan said. No group immediately claimed responsibility, and the motive for the attack was unclear. The region has been the scene of Pakistani army operations against insurgents.

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Toosi reported from Islamabad. Associated Press Writer Chris Brummitt in Islamabad and Hussain Afzal in Parachinar contributed to this report.

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