QALQILYA: A Hamas militant was killed and two Palestinian policemen were injured in exchanges of gunfire in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian security officials said. The clashes erupted when security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, which administers the West Bank, raided a neighbourhood in the city of Qalqilya to arrest gunmen of the rival Hamas group, which rules the Gaza Strip. The officials named the militant as Mohammad Yasin and said policemen were combing the area in a search for more gunmen. Witnesses said several Hamas gunmen holed up in buildings had ignored calls to surrender.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
Comments