At least 11 people were killed and more than 80 injured as a protest demonstration sparked by a deadly US raid erupted into clashes with security forces in Taliqan, capital of Afghanistan’s northeast Takhar province.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the deadly double suicide blast at a paramilitary base in the northwest, calling it revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Aid groups fear a power vacuum that will make their work in the country untenable after Afghan police and army troops replace foreign forces, a process slated to begin this summer and be complete in December 2014.
Afghan lawmakers approved the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, which will pass through Herat and Kandahar. Reports referenced an unnamed “American firm” that will help build the line.
Rows of marijuana plants were found along with cabbages and potatoes on the border wall of the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed—while his Taliban allies stone people to death for smoking or growing.
Osama bin Laden was apparently killed in a US Special Forces raid on a mansion in Abbottabad, a military garrison town just 100 kilometers outside Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, and supposed nerve-center of the counter-insurgency.
NATO’s claim that a senior al-Qaeda leader was killed in an air-strike follow a dramatic Taliban jailbreak in Kandahar and other embarrassing reversals for the alliance in Afghanistan.
Wacky extremoid Christian fundi Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, apparently followed through on his threat to burn a Koran on March 20. This prompted wacky extremoid Muslim fundis in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, to storm a UN compound, killing as many as 20 employees and setting fire to several buildings.
Specialist Jeremy Morlock pleaded guilty to three counts of murder as part of a plot contrived with fellow soldiers to kill Afghan civilians. Morlock also pleaded guilty to conspiracy, obstructing justice and illegal drug use.
Thousands marched in angry protests in cities across Pakistan against a US drone attack that killed 41 people in North Waziristan. Pakistan also pulled out of upcoming talks with the US on the war in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for two deadly suicide attacks in as many days—one targeting the funeral of the wife of an anti-Taliban militaman in Peshawar.
More than 100 people have died in suicide attacks in Afghanistan in the last three weeks—as the New Yorker reports that the US has entered into exploratory talks with the Taliban.
