HEARAT: Afghan police said Wednesday that a US-led air strike killed six women and two children in western Afghanistan, but the US military said up to 15 militants died. The bodies of eight men were found after Monday's strike on the outskirts of the city of Herat, the police chief for western Afghanistan, Ikramuddin Yawar, told. Three of the men appeared to belong to the "armed opposition" but the identities of the other five were unclear, the police officer said. Those five bodies were found near the dead women and children, who were from a nomad tribe and killed close to their tents, he said."We sent a police and army team to investigate the incident. They reported back to me that six women and two children as well as eight men -- three of them in one location and five in another -- were killed," he told. "The women and children no doubt were civilians. Three of the men could be from the armed opposition, but we are not sure about who the other five were," Yawar added.The US military said in a statement that the strike targeted a key insurgent commander called Gholam Yahya Akbari. "Killed in the attack were up to 15 militants suspected of associating with Yahya," it said. The police chief said Yahya was not dead. The military said it had no official reports of civilian casualties. "However, when we receive confirmed reports of civilian deaths, we take those reports very seriously and investigate them along with our Afghan counterparts," said spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Rick Helmer.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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