Tuesday, August 18, 2009 KABUL: A Taliban rocket struck the grounds of Afghanistan's presidential palace on Tuesday, just two days before incumbent Hamid Karzai seeks re-election in tense polls that could go to a second round.Polls show Karzai likely to win Thursday's vote, but not with the outright majority required to avoid a second round. He is relying on the last-minute support of former guerrilla chieftains in a bid to tip the balance.His main rival Abdullah, an urbane eye doctor, has run an energetic campaign, seeking to garner support from beyond his base in the mainly ethnic-Tajik north.Several small rockets were fired overnight and a police source said one caused some damage inside the sprawling, fortified presidential palace compound in central Kabul, while a second hit the capital's police headquarters. Neither caused any casualties.Militants who have vowed to disrupt Thursday's election have fired rockets at the capital twice this month as well as detonated a massive suicide bomb outside the NATO-led International Security Force Headquarters (ISAF) in central Kabul that killed seven people and wounded dozens more.Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a message sent to foreign news agency, claimed the fighters had fired four rockets, but gave no further details.
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