MAKHACHKALA, Russia – A suicide car-bomber killed three soldiers and wounded 32 others in an attack on a military base in Russia’s violence-plagued republic of Dagestan on Sunday, officials said.

The attack took place about 1 a.m. (2100 GMT Saturday) at the base in the city of Buinaksk, said Vyacheslav Gasanov, a spokesman for the republic’s Interior Ministry.

The driver of the explosives-laden small Zhiguli automobile smashed through a gate of the base and headed for an area where soldiers are quartered in tents, Gasanov said.

But soldiers opened fire on him before he reached the center of the base. Gasanov said, the driver rammed the car into a military truck where it exploded.

After the blast, a roadside bomb hit a car taking investigators to the scene, but there were no injuries reported in that explosion.

Dagestan’s president, Magomedsalam Magomedov, visited the scene of the attack and the wounded soldiers in the hospitals where they’re being treated.

"Today’s terrorist attack indicates that militants in the republic still have the power to conduct such treacherous attacks," Magomedov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

Despite "several successful" operations against the militants in the region, the country’s security services have to step up their efforts to fully stamp out the militants, he said.

Dagestan is gripped by near-daily violence between police and soldiers and insurgents believed to be inspired by separatists in neighboring Chechnya.

The attack came almost exactly 11 years after a car bomb outside an apartment building in Buinaksk housing the families of military officers killed 64 people.

The Sept. 4, 1999 attack was the first of four apartment bombings in Russia over a two-week period that killed a total of more than 290 people and that Russian officials cited as justification for launching the second war against Chechen rebels.

All the 1999 bombings were blamed on Chechen insurgents, who had recently launched an incursion into Dagestan to try to establish an Islamic state. But suspicions persist that the bombings were orchestrated by Russian officials to justify the beginning of that war. Former Federal Security Service agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was fatally poisoned with a radioactive substance in exile in Britain in 2006, co-authored a book making those allegations.

There was no claim of responsibility for Sunday’s bombings.

In Kabardino-Balkariya, another republic of the Caucasus region that includes Dagestan, a policeman was shot to death Sunday by a man whom he’d stopped for a document check, said a spokesman for the republic’s Interior Ministry, Alexander Korotkov.

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.

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.

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.

MINGORA, Pakistan — An apparent suicide bombing near a bus terminal in Pakistan’s Swat Valley killed five people and wounded at least 58 on Thursday, officials said, a sign that Islamist militants remain active in the northwest region despite a massive army operation. The explosion went off around noon in Mingora, the main town in the one-time tourist haven that was largely overrun by Taliban militants in 2007. Pakistani TV footage showed vehicles bent and twisted due to the force of the blast. Some men were desperately trying to open the doors of a car to reach a woman and man sitting in the front who were bloodied and appeared unconscious.

The area struck was crowded, so the death toll could rise significantly. Senior police official Qazi Ghulam Farooq said five people died, including two women, and that officials believed a suicide bomber was involved. At least 58 people were wounded, he said. The Pakistan military launched its biggest operation against the Taliban in Swat in 2009 after a failed attempt at a peace deal that included pledges to impose Islamic law in the area. The operation forced some 2 million people to flee, but after a few months, the army said it had taken control and many of the refugees returned home. Still, violence has occasionally flared in Swat, shaking people’s confidence. A handful of targeted killings of anti-Taliban elders in particular has worried those who fear the insurgents are staging a comeback in the valley.

In recent weeks, several major suicide attacks have shaken Pakistan. Last week, a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Mohmand tribal region, killing at least 102 people in the deadliest attack in the U.S.-allied nation this year. The attacks come as Washington is pushing Pakistan to do even more to root out militant groups that use its soil to plan attacks on Western troops across the border in Afghanistan. The U.S. has also launched more than 100 missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal area along the Afghan border. The attacks have been especially frequent in North Waziristan, the home base of the al-Qaida-linked group led by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj. One Thursday evening, three suspected U.S. missiles destroyed a house in North Waziristan’s Mada Khel area, killing five people and wounding two, said two intelligence officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media on the record.

 Pakistan officially condemns the missile strikes but is believed to secretly assist the covert, CIA-run program. Militants have responded to the strikes by assassinating tribesmen whom they accuse of spying, including two men whose bullet riddled bodies were found Thursday in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, said an intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. The bodies were accompanied by notes saying they were killed for spying on the Taliban, he said.
 

Three British soldiers have been killed by an Afghan soldier in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said the incident was believed to have been deliberate. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has apologised to the UK after the incident which took place in the Nahr-e Saraj district on Tuesday.

An investigation is under way and no further details have been released – next of kin are being informed. There is a helpline number in the UK for concerned relatives – 08457 800900. It is understood there will not be any confirmation of the circumstances surrounding the incident until the next of kin are informed. An Afghan defence ministry spokesman said the attack was carried out with a rocket-propelled grenade, and that four other British soldiers were also injured in the attack.  He said an Afghan soldier was being sought following the incident.

Five US soldiers have been killed in separate incidents of violence in Afghanistan, Nato has said. Three died in east Afghanistan and two were killed in separate roadside bombings in the south. A sixth American died in an accidental explosion. More than 350 Nato soldiers have been killed this year. In other violence, gunmen killed 11 Pakistani Shia tribesmen in the east and one person was killed by a motorbike bomb in Kandahar. Also on Saturday, hundreds of Afghans took to the streets of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in protest at increasing civilian deaths.