Free Republic

KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Sixty-one people were killed and dozens wounded in outbreaks of violence across Afghanistan in the troubled country's bloodiest 24 hours in more than a year, officials said Wednesday. At least 25 people, most of them factional fighters, were killed after fighting erupted early Wednesday between forces of a sacked provincial official and his successor in a remote district of Uruzgan province, a cabinet minister said. Also Wednesday, at least 15 died, including a woman and children, when a suspected Taliban bomb blew apart a bus in the southern province of Helmand. Government forces said they killed...

- A U.S.-led assault on a compound controlled by an extremist Islamic group turned up a list of names of suspected militants living in the United States and what may be the strongest evidence yet linking the group to al-Qaida, coalition commanders said Monday. The cache of documents at the Ansar al-Islam compound, including computer discs and foreign passports belonging to Arab fighters from around the Middle East, could bolster the Bush administration's claims that the two groups are connected, although there was no indication any of the evidence tied Ansar to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) as Washington...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Gunmen wearing burqas fired shots and threw grenades at a vegetable market where Afghan soldiers were shopping today, wounding two soldiers as other shoppers scrambled for safety, witnesses said. The attack by three assailants -- a driver and two men draped in burqas who drove up in a taxi -- occurred as hundreds of people were shopping shortly before lunchtime. Witnesses said as many as six people were injured. Burqas are the all-covering garments worn by many devout Muslim women. After the assault, residents surrounded the taxi, grabbed the driver and turned him over to police. Authorities...

SUROBI, Afghanistan, Aug. 20 — The conversation at a little restaurant here began politely, as many do in Afghanistan when the subject is the Americans. A shopkeeper said he had never seen an American soldier but felt they had come to help. A cook said the Americans' presence was all that kept the country quiet. Then a village leader, known as Khairullah, spoke up. "Afghanistan has no need for foreign troops," he said firmly. "We need national unity. We need friendship between ethnic groups. We don't need an invasion." It is rare for Afghans to talk so openly against the...