-------------------------------------------------------- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4339435,00.html (...) The Médecins Sans Frontières doctors at the [camp Killi Faizo] clinic see up to 100 patients a day. "Most of them have pneumonia, bronchitis or gastroenteritis," said Mohammad Esa(...)
Nearly all the refugees arriving at the camps tell the same story of violence and insecurity across huge swaths of southern Afghanistan. Aid agencies have not yet returned to Kandahar and, because of the poor security, it will be weeks before food can be distributed to the remote villages where it is needed most.
"The thieves came at night into our home and they looted everything we had. I tried to stop them and they beat me," said Mansum, 32, who fled his village in Helmand. "Now we don't have anything. The Taliban government was good because it was a religious government. Now the people in charge are the ones who were thieves before the Taliban came."
Other families have travelled longer distances, particularly from the hunger belt in the north-west, which has suffered worst from the drought. As Mansum spoke a truck arrived carrying a family of 40 who have spent the past 15 days driving from Maimana in the north-west.
"We left because people were stealing from our homes. We left most of our belongings behind and just fled. We stopped at Herat but it seemed just as dangerous so we came here to get something to eat," said Mohammad Nabi, as he unloaded his children. "There was fighting between Uzbek, Tajik and Pashtun and until that is finished we cannot go back." (...) --------------------------------------------------------
A US chopper that crashed at Bagram base was probably downed by hostile fire. Rumsfeld denies it as usual. US embassy and ISAF in Kabul were booby-trapped during the night. More US terror bombing in Herat, with vast amounts of cluster bombs designed not to explode on first impact.
-------------------------------------------------------- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4339457,00.html (...) The bomb, an anti-personnel mine, exploded after dark outside the US embassy last Thursday, said a source who was briefed on the incident the following day. No one was hurt. When US guards went to inspect the damage outside the embassy the following morning, they discovered the area was booby-trapped with several more bombs. Trip wires were connected to more anti-personnel mines around the American embassy and the headquarters for the British-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), which is situated nearby. The booby-trap bombs were defused.
Two US marines died yesterday and five more were injured, two critically, when their helicopter crashed south-east of Kabul after taking off from Bagram airbase.Military spokesmen and the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said there were no signs of hostile fire on the helicopter and that initial indications suggested mechanical failure. But witnesses at the airport last night reported that helicopters and aircraft were now taking off using flares, the heat from which deflects heat-seeking missiles targeting the aircraft. (...) UN sources said that the security situation in the country had deteriorated in the past week. The Isaf patrols in the city, intended to boost security and confidence, are few and far between, barely visible on the streets.
It was not clear who was responsible for the embassy bomb. It was not necessarily being blamed on Taliban recalcitrants who would find it easy to infiltrate Kabul, although city police said last night that they had arrested five Taliban entering Kabul from the north.
Powerful anti-Taliban warlords outside Kabul who feel they are being cut out of the western-supported post-Taliban dispensation also have scores to settle.
The Americans are currently singling out Ismail Khan, the pro-Iranian fighter who runs western Afghanistan from his power base in Herat, for particular criticism.
UN sources said Iran was currently flying in arms and supplies to Mr Khan, who has yet to declare his loyalty to the interim government headed by the pro-American Hamid Karzai.
US aircraft have been bombing the Herat region over the past couple of weeks, ostensibly hitting targets staked out by Taliban or al-Qaida remnants. But Afghan government sources indicate the attacks are punitive strikes on Mr Khan's forces because the warlord is refusing to follow or ders from Kabul and will not disarm his forces.
An internal document from the medical charity Medécins Sans Frontières, written last week and obtained by the Guardian, says that "a large number of civilian deaths and casualties" have been caused by recent US cluster bomb attacks on the Herat region.
It reports local United Nations de-mining experts in Herat as saying that a "vast amount" of unexploded cluster bombs are lying around, not because they have failed to explode but because they have been designed not to explode, and to be used instead as anti-personnel mines. The bombs are particularly lethal to children. --------------------------------------------------------
Hakki