Friday, June 12, 2009 WASHINGTON: Violent unrest surged to new highs in Afghanistan in May and there are "tough months ahead" even as US reinforcements flow in, the commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan warned Thursday. "The past week was the highest level of security incidents in Afghanistan's post-liberation history," General David Petraeus said in a speech here, referring to the Taliban's ouster from power in late 2001. Figures for incidents in Afghanistan for the first week of June were not immediately available.From January to May, insurgent attacks in Afghanistan were up by 59 percent from the same period a year earlier, NATO data show. "There is no question that the situation has deteriorated over the course of the past two years and that there are difficult times ahead," said Petraeus, who heads the US Central Command. "There are some tough months ahead," he added, saying that the levels of violence would rise in part "because we are going to go after their sanctuaries and safe havens as we must."
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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