ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia – A suicide car bomber hit the central market of a major city in Russia’s North Caucasus on Thursday, killing at least 15 and wounding more than 100 people in one of the worst terror attacks in the volatile region in years, officials said.

The attacker detonated his explosives as he drove by the main entrance to the Vladikavkaz market, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry.

At least 15 people, including the suicide bomber, were killed and 133 were wounded in the explosion, said Alexander Pogorely of the Emergency Situations Ministry’s branch in southern Russia. He said 87 of the injured were hospitalized, many in grave condition.

Russian television stations showed a shrapnel-littered square in front of the market, with blood stains on the pavement and rows of vehicles scarred by the blast.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his regional envoy to Vladikavkaz to help coordinate efforts to help the victims.

No one has immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, which was the deadliest such attack in the region since a double suicide bombing killed 12, mostly police officers, in the province of Dagestan in April. Twin suicide bombings on Moscow subway in March killed 40 people and wounded over 100.

The market and its surrounding blocks has been the target of several bomb attacks over the past dozen years, in which scores of people have died.

Vladikavkaz is the capital of the Russian republic of North Ossetia. Although it is less plagued by violence than some other republics in the region such as Chechnya and Dagestan, North Ossetia has suffered ethnic tensions and frequent terror attacks.

It was the scene of the 2004 Beslan crisis, in which Chechen terrorists took hundreds of hostages at a school — a siege that ended in a bloodbath killing more than 330 people, about half of them children.

The Vladikavkaz market was bombed in 1999, killing 55. Another bombing in 2001 killed six people. In 2004, 11 people died when a minibus stopped near the market was bombed.

Russia‘s North Caucasus region has been gripped by violence stemming from two separatist wars in Chechnya and fueled by endemic poverty, rampant official corruption and police abuses.

In the Caspian Sea province of Dagestan, officials said Thursday that a hotel employee and another civilian were shot to death by men trying to build a bomb in their hotel room.

Republican Interior Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said the shooting took place late Wednesday in the capital Makhachkala. He said three armed men fled a room in the small hotel after an explosion and opened fire on a hotel clerk and another person who confronted them. He says police found several bombs and six grenades in the room.

In the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt, on the border with Chechnya, a policeman returning home from work was shot to death, Gasanov said.

KABUL, Afghanistan – U.S. and Afghan troops repelled attackers wearing American uniforms and suicide vests in a pair of simultaneous assaults before dawn Saturday on NATO bases near the Pakistani border, including one where seven CIA employees died in a suicide attack last year.

The raids appear part of an insurgent strategy to step up attacks in widely scattered parts of the country as the U.S. focuses its resources on the battle around the Taliban’s southern birthplace of Kandahar.

Also Saturday, nearly 50 female pupils and teachers were rushed to the hospital after an apparent toxic gas attack at a Kabul high school, the government said. It was the second case of poisoning at a girls’ school in the capital this week. Officials suspect the Taliban, who oppose female education.

The militant assault in the border province of Khost began about 4 a.m. when dozens of insurgents stormed Forward Operating Base Salerno and nearby Camp Chapman with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, according to NATO and Afghan police.

Two attackers managed to breach the wire protecting Salerno but were killed before they could advance far onto the base, NATO said. Twenty-one attackers were killed — 15 at Salerno and six at Chapman – and five were captured, it said.

Three more insurgents, including a commander, were killed in an airstrike as they fled the area, NATO said.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said two Afghan soldiers were killed and three wounded in the fighting. Four U.S. troops were wounded, NATO officials said.

U.S. and Afghan officials blamed the attack on the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based faction of the Taliban with close ties to al-Qaida. Camp Chapman was the scene of the Dec. 30 suicide attack that killed the seven CIA employees.

Afghan police said about 50 insurgents took part in the twin assaults. After being driven away from the bases, the insurgents approached the nearby offices of the governor and provincial police headquarters but were also scattered, said Khost provincial police Chief Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai.

"Given the size of the enemy’s force, this could have been a major catastrophe for Khost. Luckily we prevented it," he said.

Small-arms fire continued through the morning, while NATO helicopters patrolled overhead. The dead were wearing U.S. Army uniforms, which can be easily purchased in shops in Kabul and other cities, possibly pilfered from military warehouses.

The twin attacks appeared to be part of a growing pattern of insurgent assaults far from the southern battlefields of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, which have been the main focus of the U.S. military campaign. Last December, President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan, most to the Kandahar area where the Islamist movement was organized in the mid-1990s.

Late Friday, insurgents stormed a police checkpoint in Takhar province near the northern border with Tajikistan. The Interior Ministry said nine insurgents were killed and 12 wounded with no losses on the government side. The day before, Taliban fighters killed eight Afghan policemen in a raid on a checkpoint outside the northern city of Kunduz.

And on Wednesday, an Afghan police driver with family links to the Taliban killed three Spaniards — two police trainers and their interpreter — at a training center in the northern province of Badghis.

Although the Afghan capital is relatively secure, incidents apparently directed at female students have raised concern about Taliban intimidation within the city.

The Health Ministry said 48 pupils and teachers at the Zabihullah Esmati High School were rushed to hospitals after falling ill with breathing problems and nausea. All but nine were treated and released after blood samples were taken to try to determine the cause.

On Wednesday, dozens of students and teachers at another Kabul girls’ school became sick when an unknown gas spread through classrooms, education officials said. The cause of that incident has not been determined, but officials fear the apparent poisonings could be part of an insurgent campaign to frighten girls from attending school.

Also Saturday, the government criticized U.S. media reports that alleged numerous Afghan officials had received payments from the CIA. A presidential office statement did not address or deny any specific allegations, but called the reports an insult to the government and an attempt to defame people within it.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the CIA had been paying Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, who was arrested last month as part of an investigation into corruption. The Washington Post reported the next day the agency was making payments to a large number of officials in President Hamid Karzai’s administration.

"Afghanistan believes that making such allegations will not strengthen the alliance against terrorism and will not strengthen an Afghanistan based on the law and rules, but will have negative effects in those areas," the statement by Karzai’s office said, without commenting on the substance of the reports.

"We strongly condemn such irresponsible allegations which just create doubt and defame responsible people of this country," it said.

Meanwhile, NATO issued a statement saying coalition helicopter pilots were not responsible for the deaths of three Afghan policemen killed Aug. 20 in what had been considered a friendly fire incident in Jowzjan province’s Darzab district.

It said the helicopters showed up hours after fighting began and it was possible the three had been killed earlier.

All Afghan forces had also been ordered to remain inside compounds at the time the two helicopters fired a missile and 80 30-millimeter rounds at an insurgent firing position, NATO said.

KABUL, Afghanistan – A roadside bomb tore through a crowded market in Afghanistan’s increasingly volatile north, killing three policemen and two civilians, a police official said Friday.

Another 15 civilians were wounded in Thursday evening’s bombing in Kunduz province’s Archi town. The blast went off as residents were shopping for foods ahead of breaking the dawn-to-dusk fast observed during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but deputy provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Aqtash said civilians appear to have been the target.

"This was a cruel act of the enemy. There was nothing to link these people to the coalition or to politics," Aqtash said.

Kunduz, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, has not traditionally been a stronghold of the Taliban, who enjoy their greatest support among ethnic Pashtuns in the country’s southern and eastern provinces.

However, insurgents have been steadily building their presence there since about 2007, mostly among Pashtuns who are a minority in the area. Attacks on a key coalition supply line running south from Tajikistan are a constant menace, along with ambushes of German forces who help provide security.

In establishing a northern foothold, Afghan authorities believe the Taliban use veterans from southern battlefields to help organize local groups, sometimes with help from the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which provides recruits from among the Uzbek minority.

"The situation is very bad and dangerous in Kunduz but unfortunately the security officials keep saying things are all right," Mabubullah Mabub, chairman of the Kunduz provincial council, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "Over the last two years, the situation has been getting worse."

Farther east in Badakhshan province, Afghan army commandos aided by U.S. special forces discovered a major weapons cache in the remote village of Nawci on Wednesday, NATO reported. It said weapons found included 78 rockets with launchers, 47 mortar rounds, more than 9,000 rounds of ammunition, and 24 rocket propelled grenades. All were destroyed.

The town is believed to be safe haven for Taliban fighters and drug smugglers, as well as a conduit for foreign fighters arriving from neighboring Pakistan, NATO said.

Following the release of classified American military documents by WikiLeaks, Afghan officials have become more outspoken in urging the United States to put more pressure on Pakistan to shut down terror sanctuaries on its side of the border.

President Hamid Karzai on Thursday told a visiting U.S. Congressional delegation that the war against terrorists cannot succeed as long as the Taliban and their allies maintain sanctuaries in Pakistan.

A statement by Karzai’s office said the Afghan leader told the U.S. delegation that significant progress had been made in rebuilding the country after decades of war. But he said the campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida had faltered because of ongoing civilian casualties during NATO military operations and a lack of focus on "destroying the terrorists’ refuge" across the border.

Karzai also said President Barack Obama’s announcement that he would begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan in July 2011 has given "the enemy a morale boost" because they believe they can simply hold out until the Americans leave.

The medical team had been providing eye care to villagers in a remote area of northern Afghanistan. Insurgents claim responsibility for one of the worst attacks on civilians in the war.

Kabul, Afghanistan – Taliban fighters ambushed and killed a 10-member medical team, including six Americans, as they were returning from a trip to a remote northern area to provide eye care to rural villagers, their aid organization and local officials said Saturday. 

The 10 charity workers, who also included two Afghans, a German and a Briton, were found slain in a remote forested area of Badakhshan province, according to provincial police and the International Assistance Mission, the Kabul-based group that organized the trip.

The Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the deaths, claiming those killed were spies and preachers of Christianity. The details provided in statements by spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid suggested that the killers were in fact insurgents and not bandits, who also roam freely in the area.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul could not confirm the nationalities of the six who were listed by the group as Americans, but spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said there was "reason to believe that several American citizens are among the deceased."

The charity’s executive director, Dirk Frans, said it was still awaiting positive identification of the bodies, but that the police description matched that of its workers and their vehicles. Three of the team members were women, he said.

The attack was one of the deadliest strikes against foreign aid workers in the course of the Afghan war. It also represented the largest toll in a single episode for American civilians working in Afghanistan since a suicide bomber killed seven members of a CIA team at a base in eastern Afghanistan in December.

The deaths also pointed up the growing dangers faced by foreign aid organizations, which are regarded by the Taliban as collaborators with the Western military. Last month, gunmen and suicide bombers in June stormed the offices of the U.S.-based development group DAI in Kunduz province, also in Afghanistan’s north, killing at least five people.

The police chief in Badakhshan, Gen. Agha Nur Kamtuz, said villagers told police that the International Assistance Mission workers had been in the area for about two weeks, moving between there and neighboring Nuristan province. Heavy fighting has been taking place over the last month in parts of Nuristan between insurgents and Afghan security forces backed by Western troops.

"People told them it was dangerous," Kamtuz said. "They said they were doctors … and no one had anything against them."

Villagers alerted authorities after they found three bullet-ridden vehicles that belonged to the group in the forest, the police chief said.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said insurgents encountered the group in the Kiran Munjan district of Badakhshan and tried to arrest them on suspicion of spying. "But they tried to escape, then mujahedeen attacked and killed all of them on the spot," he said by telephone.

The International Assistance Mission, which has been working in Afghanistan since 1966, describes itself as a charitable nonprofit Christian organization. One of its major projects is a chain of eye hospitals and clinics.

In a statement posted on its website, the group condemned "this senseless killing of people who have done nothing but serve the poor."

The charity’s medical team was led by Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, N.Y., who had been with the organization since its early days, Frans said. The group’s website says its expatriate workers are volunteers.

Jordan – Rockets from Egypt’s Sinai, where Islamist militants have operated in the past, hit Israel’s and Jordan’s Red Sea port resorts on Monday, killing a Jordanian civilian and injuring three others, Jordanian and Israeli police said.

A Jordanian interior ministry source said one of the four injured when a rocket exploded near a five-star hotel in Aqaba, later died from his injuries.
There was no word of casualties in the adjacent Israeli port and holiday resort of Eilat, police said. Aqaba and Eilat lie on the narrow northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, an extension of the Red Sea, with Sinai stretching west and south of Eilat.

Jordanian Minister of State Ali al-Ayed said the kingdom would continue its "fight against terrorists who undertake callous attacks that targets innocent people."

Israeli President Shimon Peres condemned the rocket fire and said Israel and Jordan, who made peace in 1994, were "partners in the uncompromising struggle to eradicate terrorism." "There is a real struggle in the Middle East between the peace camp of moderate countries and the camp of extremists, who want to sabotage any chance for peace," Peres said.

Asked where the Aqaba rocket was fired from, the Jordanian source said without elaborating: "It came from the west." Experts were investigating the site to find out where the short-range rocket had been launched, he said.

Egyptian security sources were quoted by the state news agency as saying rockets could not have been fired from Sinai since the largely empty, desert region was very mountainous.

"The only missiles that can be fired from Sinai are mortars which can pass over these heights," General Abdel Fadeel Shousha, governor of South Sinai, said adding the area such an operation would require open space.

Aqaba resident Ibrahim Salymehin said he heard one loud blast and when he arrived at the scene he saw at least three injured men taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance.

A crowd gathered near the scene of the explosion several hundred meters away from a five-star hotel close to the beach.

"We saw the wreckage of a taxi which was burned, and fragmented metal scattered around the area that was cordoned off by police," another Aqaba resident, Abdullah Yashin Rawashdehd, told.

Eilat District Police Commander Moshe Cohen told Israel Radio that his forces were still trying to confirm that five explosions heard in the morning had been caused by shelling.

Two of the suspected rockets or mortar bombs appeared to have landed in the sea, while another hit Aqaba, he said.

"It’s a little early to say, but it is reasonable to assume that it came from the southern area," he said, referring to neighboring Egypt, whose Sinai Peninsula has suffered occasional violence attributed to Islamist militants.

A police spokesman later said the remains of one rocket was found in Eilat and was being examined by bomb experts.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

At least one rocket struck Aqaba on April 22, causing no casualties. Amman said the rocket had been fired from outside Jordan and Israeli media said Sinai was a possible launch point.

In 2005, rockets were fired at U.S. warships in Aqaba but missed their target and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al Qaeda said it was behind the attack.

Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through Sinai and killed three people at a bakery in Eilat, which lies on Israel’s southern tip and has only rarely been touched by the Middle East conflict.

Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have full peace treaties with Israel. Those relations were frayed by Israel’s crackdown in 2000 on a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three U.S. troops died in blasts in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for July to at least 63 and surpassing the previous month’s record as the deadliest for American forces in the nearly 9-year-old war. In Kabul, police fired weapons into the air Friday to disperse a crowd of angry Afghans who shouted "death to America," hurled stones and set fire to two vehicles after an SUV was involved in a traffic accident that killed four Afghans on the main airport road, according to the capital’s criminal investigations chief, Abdul Ghaafar Sayedzada.

SUVs often are associated with foreigners, but it remained unclear who caused the accident because the occupants fled the scene. Afghan police, some carrying riot shields, converged on the area, firing warning shots into the air to disperse the protesters. Sayedzada said the crowd burned two foreigners’ vehicles, causing heavy black smoke to rise from the scene. "It is our right to raise up our voice and protest when innocent Afghans are harmed," said Azizullah, a 25-year-old student, who like many Afghans uses one name.

He said foreigners were in the vehicle that struck the car, killing the Afghan civilians. Ahmad Jawid, who also was at the scene, asked: "Are we not Muslims? Are we not from Afghanistan? Infidels are here and they are ruling us. Why?" A fatal traffic accident caused by a U.S. military convoy in 2006 triggered an anti-American riot in Kabul that left at least 14 people dead and dozens injured.

The three U.S. service members died in two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, a NATO statement said Friday. It gave no nationalities, but U.S. officials said all three were Americans. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity pending notification of kin. U.S. and NATO commanders had warned casualties would rise as the international military force ramps up the war against the Taliban, especially in their southern strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan last December in a bid to turn back a resurgent Taliban.

British and Afghan troops launched a new offensive Friday in the Sayedebad area of Helmand to try to deny insurgents a base from which to launch attacks in Nad Ali and Marjah, the British military announced. Coalition and Afghan troops have sought to solidify control of Marjah after overrunning the poppy-farming community five months ago. In Kabul, a crowd threw stones and set fire to an SUV after a traffic accident Friday in which two Afghans were killed and two were injured, according to traffic official Abdul Saboor. SUVs are associated with foreigners, but Saboor said the occupants of the vehicle fled the scene.

The tally of 63 American service member deaths in July is based on military reports compiled by The Associated Press. June had been the deadliest month for both the U.S. and the overall NATO-led force. A total of 104 international service members died last month, including 60 Americans. The American deaths this month include Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin McNeley from Kingman, Arizona, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove, 25, from the Seattle area. They went missing last week in Logar province south of Kabul, and the Taliban announced they were holding one of the sailors.

McNeley’s body was recovered there Sunday, and Newlove’s body was pulled from a river Wednesday evening, Afghan officials said. The Taliban offered no explanation for Newlove’s death, but Afghan officials speculated he died of wounds suffered when the two were ambushed by the Taliban. The discovery of Newlove’s body only deepened the mystery of the men’s disappearance nearly 60 miles (100 kilometers) from their base in Kabul. An investigation is under way, but with both sailors dead, U.S. authorities remain at a loss to explain what two junior enlisted men in noncombat jobs were doing driving alone in Logar — much of which is not under government control.

Newlove’s father, Joseph Newlove, told KOMO-TV in Seattle he too was baffled why his son had left the relative safety of Kabul. "He’s never been out of that town. So why would he go out of that town? He wouldn’t have," he said. Senior military officials in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the sailors were never assigned anywhere near where their bodies were found.

A NATO official in Kabul shot down speculation the two were abducted in Kabul and driven to Logar — the same province where New York Times reporter David Rohde was kidnapped in 2008 while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander. Rohde and an Afghan colleague escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity, most spent in Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. Elsewhere, violence continued Friday.

Four Afghan civilians were killed and three were injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Zabul province of southern Afghanistan, provincial spokesman Mohammed Jan Rasoolyar said. When police arrived at the scene, Taliban fighters opened fire. One insurgent was killed, the spokesman said.

In Kandahar, a candidate in September’s parliamentary election escaped assassination Friday when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded, city security chief Fazil Ahmad Sherzad said. The Interior Ministry said a woman and a child were killed and another child was wounded.

BREAKING NEWS – 3 more US troops die in southern Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three more U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing the U.S. death toll for July to at least 66 and making it the deadliest month for American forces in the nearly 9-year-war.

A NATO statement Friday said one service member died following an insurgent attack and two others were killed in a roadside bombing the same day in southern Afghanistan. A U.S military official confirmed all three were American troops. Earlier in the day, a U.S. military official confirmed three other American service members died in two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan on Thursday. The six deaths raised the U.S. death toll for the month to at least 66, according to an Associated Press count. June had been the deadliest month for the U.S. with 60 deaths.

Kampala, Uganda – Ugandan police Sunday released photo reconstructions of two men they say were the suicide bombers behind last week’s attacks on World Cup fans that left 76 dead.

"Our intelligence so far confirms that last Sunday’s bomb attacks were suicide attacks," Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, Uganda’s national police chief, told reporters. The international police organization Interpol was distributing the photo reconstructions in an attempt to identify the attackers, Kayihura said.

Interpol and the FBI have helped confirm the attacks were suicide bombings, he said. Investigators suspect that two severed heads found parts attached are those of the bombers, he added.

The Kampala bombings struck an Ethiopian restaurant and a rugby center where crowds of people were watching the World Cup final match. Officials also have found an explosive-laden belt in a nightclub trash can in a Kampala suburb, suggesting a third attack was planned but not carried out.

The Somali Islamist insurgent movement Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the attacks, calling them retaliation for Ugandan participation in an African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Uganda is hosting an African Union summit this week, and Kayihura said the Ugandan government has urged the organization for the authority to hunt down Al-Shabaab members "in their bases which are known to us."

The AU peacekeeping mission AMISOM has about 5,200 troops – 3,200 from Uganda, the rest from Burundi. The troops are there to support the U.N.-backed transitional government in Somalia, which has been without an effective central government since 1991.

Ugandan and Kenyan authorities have made more than 20 arrests since the bombings, Kayihura said. He said two Ugandans arrested in Kenya were members of the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group that battled government troops in the country’s west during the 1990s, and had ties to Al-Shabaab.

One of those arrested in Kenya has been handed over to Ugandan authorities, while the other was still held in Kenya, he said. He would not disclose details, telling reporters that police are still gathering evidence against them.

"This effort is part of the regional and continental help we are receiving since the attack," he said.

Kayihura said several non-Ugandans, including Pakistani nationals, were among those arrested. But he said none of those have been definitely linked to the Kampala attacks, and most were taken into custody for having "unclear" travel documents. Meanwhile, four Ethiopians picked up by police after the bombing have been found "free of any criminality" and released.

A suicide bomber has killed at least 43 people and injured 40 more southwest of Baghdad, Iraqi police says. The bomber attacked government-backed Sunni militia members lining up to be paid in the town of Radwaniya.

The Sunni militia fighters, known as Sahwa or Awakening Councils, were once allied with al-Qaeda, but turned against the militant group in 2006. Awakening Council members, also known as Sons of Iraq, are credited with helping bring down violence in Iraq in the past two years. They are a frequent target of anti-government militants.

Among the wounded were at least two soldiers, the Interior Ministry said.

"There were more than 85 people lined up in three lines at the main gate of the military base to receive salaries when a person approached us", a survivor, 20-year-old Tayseer Mehsen, told the Reuters news agency at Mahmudiya hospital.

"When one of the soldiers tried to stop him, he blew himself up."

The Sahwa are credited with helping to reduce the overall levels of violence in Iraq since they joined the US military and government forces in the fight against al-Qaeda.

But they have been frequently targeted by militants and have recently complained about harassment from government troops as a political vacuum continues following inconclusive elections in March.

Sunni insurgents have sought to exploit the deadlock created by a failure of Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions to agree on a new coalition government.

There are also fears that the political uncertainty could hinder the planned withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq by the end of August, in preparation for a full military departure by 2012.

Control of the Sahwa passed to Iraq in October 2008, and their  wages – said to have been cut from $300 under US leadership  to $100 – have been paid, often late, by the Shia-led government.

No group or person has so far claimed responsibility for the attack. Iraq has witnessed bombings and terror attacks on an almost daily basis since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. The war toppled Iraq’s notorious dictator Saddam Hussein but also opened the gate for unrelenting violence by al-Qaeda-linked militants.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Five NATO soldiers were killed in southern and eastern Afghanistan amid reports of new fighting in Nuristan, a remote northeastern province of Afghanistan, officials said Saturday.

Four of the soldiers, including two British servicemen, were killed in southern Afghanistan. The fifth was killed in the eastern part of the country. All of the fatalities were caused by homemade bombs that exploded while the soldiers were on patrol. Bombs and small-arms fire are the main causes of death in Afghanistan. So far this year 57 percent of all deaths have been caused by improvised explosive devices, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks military casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 The Americans and the British have focused their increased forces on southern Afghanistan this summer in an effort to improve local governments and set the stage for a military campaign in the fall.

In response, insurgents appear to be testing defenses elsewhere in the country. Several times over the past six weeks, residents in the remote Barg-e-Matal district of Nuristan Province have reported large numbers of Pakistani Taliban fighters crossing the border and attacking the district center.

 “We are getting fires from southeast, northwest, and other directions,” Maulavi Qahir, the district governor of Barg-e-Matal, said in a telephone interview on Saturday. Shooting could be heard in the background.

“We have only 190 Afghan Border Police and Afghan National Police in the district center and in our check-posts,” Mr. Qahir said. “There are no American or Afghan commandos in the district center. They all left the district center last month.”

About two dozen American Special Operations commandos as well as Afghan soldiers were patrolling in Barg-e-Matal after a cross-border attack in late May. Since then there have been reports of renewed fighting, but the American military has been reluctant to send troops to the sparsely populated area when there are many other demands on American forces, said officers familiar with the situation.

On Saturday, the American military said drones with cameras sent to survey the area had not detected any significant insurgent activity.

But military officials did not rule out the possibility of scattered fighting, perhaps between local factions.

A car bomb killed at least three people in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the city’s mayor, Jose Reyes Ferriz, said Friday. It was the first time a car bomb has been used to attack federal police, the mayor said.

"The violence is escalating," he said. Two police officers and a paramedic died and seven people, including a local news cameraman, were injured in the blast Thursday night. A female paramedic was in grave condition, he said. The incident happened around 8 p.m. in the city’s most violent zone. Before the incident, a call to the city’s emergency center reported "lots of shooting and killing," Reyes said.
"When the federal police responded, there was a suspicious car there. One of them went to go check it out and when he opened the door, that’s when the bomb went off," he said. While Mexican authorities say the attack was the result of a car bomb, a counterterrorism expert told there is "some confusion" about exactly what caused the car to explode. "For this to be an improvised grenade attack, in some capacity, it doesn’t surprise me," said Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at Stratfor, a privately owned global Intelligence service. 

But if this particular car bomb was manufactured to the level of sophistication similar to those terrorist groups like Hezbollah are using, then this is a significant new event, said Burton. "The devil is in the details," he added. A claim of responsibility scribbled in a graffiti message was later found in downtown Juarez. It was purportedly signed by the Juarez drug cartel. "This is significant because usually it’s La Linea, the Juarez cartel’s operatives, that sign the messages," Reyes told. "It’s as if to say, ‘Now it’s the big guys in charge, not the operatives." Federal police spokesman Ramon Salinas said the blast in the Mexican border city took place as authorities were responding to "some sort of emergency." Earlier in the day, police announced the arrest of Jesus Armando Acosta Guerrero, believed to be a leader in the Juarez cartel — one of two drug trafficking organizations operating in the area. There had been relative calm in the city since elections were held there on July 4. But Thursday’s explosion and an attack Sunday against Mexican federal police mark the third and fourth major incidents in recent weeks.

On June 29, a shooting between suspected drug traffickers and Mexican federal police left one officer dead. The shooting was also seen as a watershed moment in the ongoing border drug war — several bullets from that gunfight strayed across the border into Texas, hitting the El Paso City Hall. There were no injuries reported on the U.S. side. On April 24, six federal police officers were killed in a daylight shooting in Juarez. Hours after the attack, a painted message found in the city allegedly from members of La Linea claimed responsibility for the attack. La Linea is an extension of the Juarez cartel, made up in part of former Juarez police officers, according to authorities. Assaults against federal police have increased since they took full control of security in the city from the Mexican military on April 9. "There have been at least a dozen, maybe 15 attacks against the federal police since we took over" security, Salinas said. The Juarez cartel and the Sinaloa cartel have been in a bloody turf war since 2008. More than 5,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Juarez during the turf war, according to local authorities.