{"id":249083,"date":"2010-01-29T11:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T16:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16711557.post-5967061255665911629"},"modified":"2010-01-29T11:31:20","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T16:31:20","slug":"resistance-fighters-attack-afghan-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/249083","title":{"rendered":"Resistance Fighters Attack Afghan Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/53911892@N00\/4314153538\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2769\/4314153538_f7df8dc27b_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: solid 2px #000000;\" \/><\/a><br \/><span style=\"font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/53911892@N00\/4314153538\/\">Imperialist forces bombed a building in Lashkar Gah on January 29, 2010 saying it was a hold out for Taliban fighters.<\/a><br \/>Originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/53911892@N00\/\">Pan-African News Wire File Photos<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Friday, January 29, 2010 <br \/>16:08 Mecca time, 13:08 GMT     <\/p>\n<p>Taliban fighters attack Afghan city   <\/p>\n<p>Nato said its troops and Afghan soldiers had contained the fighters in a vacant building <\/p>\n<p>Afghan troops, backed by Nato helicopters, have clashed with Taliban fighters after they attacked United Nations and government buildings in Helmand province, witnesses and officials said. <\/p>\n<p>The Taliban fighters launched the assault in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of the southern region, early on Friday. <\/p>\n<p>Provincial officials said two attackers blew themselves up and one Afghan soldier had been slightly injured in the fighting. <\/p>\n<p>Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said seven fighters, armed with suicide vests and machine guns, had been sent to carry out the attack. <\/p>\n<p>He said that 20 foreign and Afghan soldiers were killed or wounded, but Nato said no casualties had been reported on the pro-government side. <\/p>\n<p>Kamal Uddin, the deputy provincial police chief, said no civilian casualties had been reported. <\/p>\n<p>Fighters disguised <\/p>\n<p>Al Jazeera&#8217;s David Chater, reporting from the capital, Kabul, said fighters had stormed various points in the city. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Apparently they were dressed in either Afghan national army uniforms or police uniforms. Several explosions have been heard,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It appears that gunmen have taken over a hotel that was being built about 300 yards [275 metre] away from the governor&#8217;s offices.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Nato said its troops and Afghan soldiers had contained the Taliban in a vacant building. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The main group of attackers was contained in a vacant building to the south of Sharwali Barracks,&#8221; an International Security Assistance Forces (Isaf) statement said. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Attack helicopters are over the city and have fired upon insurgents.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Sporadic fighting continued as Afghan troops searched for the other fighters. Police officials said they believed five or six of them were holed up inside the building. <\/p>\n<p>Taliban assaults <\/p>\n<p>Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial government, said officials had received tips in recent days that the Taliban planned an attack on government buildings in Lashkar Gah. <\/p>\n<p>The Taliban have attempted similar attacks in Kabul, most recently on January 18 when seven attackers were killed after a five-hour assault. <\/p>\n<p>Five Afghan civilians and security forces also died in that fighting. <\/p>\n<p>The Helmand assault comes a day after a new fund aimed at reducing the Taliban threat was announced in an international conference on the future of Afghanistan held in London. <\/p>\n<p>The fund sets aside $140m for the first year of a programme to &#8220;reintegrate&#8221; moderate Taliban into the Afghan society. <\/p>\n<p>The Taliban released a statement dismissing the initiative as  &#8220;futile&#8221;, but a UN official revealed that &#8220;active members of the  insurgency&#8221; had met an envoy from the international body early this month at their request. <\/p>\n<p>Source: Al Jazeera and agencies<br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img width='1' height='1' src='https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/16711557-5967061255665911629?l=panafricannews.blogspot.com' alt='' \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imperialist forces bombed a building in Lashkar Gah on January 29, 2010 saying it was a hold out for Taliban fighters.Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos Friday, January 29, 2010 16:08 Mecca time, 13:08 GMT Taliban fighters attack Afghan city Nato said its troops and Afghan soldiers had contained the fighters in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4243,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}