Kabul, (Afghanistan): President Hamid Karzai blamed foreign militants for fanning the violence raging across Afghanistan and urged the Taliban to stop fighting and join forces with the new government.
Meanwhile, Afghan and coalition troops arrested 10 Taliban militants in a large-scale operation on Friday in southern Kandahar province, and a senior Afghan police official narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle near the city of Kandahar, wounding two guards.
Taliban militants also kidnapped an Indian mobile phone contractor on Friday after stopping his car at gunpoint on the Kandahar-Kabul highway in the southern Zabul province, said Ali Khail, a provincial government spokesman.
Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, said the group's ''higher authorities'' would soon decide his fate.
Karzai again blamed ‘outsiders’ for the ongoing Afghan insurgency, which he said had claimed the lives of many ordinary Afghans.
''I want them (the Taliban) to return to us with their guns and to serve their countrymen,'' Karzai said during a military parade Friday marking the 14th anniversary of the mujahedeen victory over the communist government.
Remnants of the former Taliban government, which was toppled by a US-led invasion in 2001, and other militants have stepped up attacks against Afghan security forces and coalition troops in recent months.
The arrests of insurgents Friday took place in the Punjwai district, about 50 kilometers southwest of Kandahar, Gov. Haji Asadullah Khalid said.
''The government had information that the Taliban were hiding in this area, and with support of coalition forces, at least 10 Taliban were arrested and the operation is ongoing,'' Khalid said.
Niaz Mohammed, the chief of nearby Danan district, said he was unharmed after an attempt on his life Friday but that his two police guards were wounded and in stable condition.
''After the Taliban's reign ended, normal life started but the enemies of security and peace continued interfering and they are killing the engineers, elders and educated, destroying schools and madrassas (religious schools), and killing Afghans, whether they be the Taliban, police or innocent,'' Karzai said. ''This is the plan of the outsiders for the killing of Afghans.''
Security was tight during the ceremony, particularly around Karzai, as thousands of soldiers and policemen marched past as helicopters hovered nearby and troupes of men performed a traditional war dance.
Hundreds of former ''holy warriors,'' who first battled the Soviets during the 1979-89 occupations of Afghanistan and then the communist government for three more years, also filed past a clapping Karzai.
The parade passed by bomb-ravaged buildings in the southeastern quarter of Kabul, the scene of fierce fighting during the four-year civil war that killed an estimated 50,000 people and followed the Mujahedeen's 1992 toppling of the communist government.
Comments
0 comment