At least 10 dead as Afghans protest NATO raid victims
At least 10 people were killed and 70 injured Wednesday during protests against a NATO raid that Afghan officials say killed civilians in northern Afghanistan, according to local officials and German military officers.
Protesters clashed with police during the demonstrations attended by about 4,000 people, said Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa of Takhar province.
They were protesting an attack Tuesday night that NATO said killed four insurgents, including two armed females.
However, a deputy governor said the victims of the attack included a man, his wife and a guest not linked to any insurgent group.
Afghan officials said 11 people were killed during the protests, while German officials put the death toll at 10.
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Osama bin Laden killed in Pakistan; Karzai reacts
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he hopes the world believes that his country is "not the place of terrorism" after the announcement that the al Qaeda leader was killed in neighboring Pakistan.
"If the international troops/forces are true allies of the Afghans - they should come out and say that the killing of Afghans, children and elders which took place over the many years on a daily basis was not a good idea," Karzai said Monday on state television.
Bin Laden eluded capture for years, once reportedly slipping out of a training camp in Afghanistan just hours before a barrage of U.S. cruise missiles destroyed it.
Prior to masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, bin Laden had been implicated in a series of deadly, high-profile attacks that had grown in their intensity and success during the 1990s. They included a deadly firefight with U.S. soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 in August 1998, and an attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000.
In his speech, Obama reiterated that the United States is not fighting Islam.
"I've made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims," Obama said.
Afghanistan recaptures 65 inmates; hundreds at large after escape
Afghan authorities said Tuesday they have recaptured 65 of the more than 400 inmates who slipped out of a southern Afghanistan prison a day earlier through a nearly quarter-mile tunnel dug beneath the compound.
A massive search operation continues to find the others - many of them insurgent fighters, said the Kandahar governor's office.
The Taliban issued a statement taking responsibility for the escape from the prison in Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed said digging the tunnel took five months. The escape took four and a half hours, he said.
Read the full storyNATO: Hundreds tunnel out of Afghan jail
More than 400 prisoners escaped early Monday from a jail in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, officials said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for facilitating the escape and said 541 prisoners fled. The NATO0-led International Security Assistance Force said the number was closer to 470.
Waheed Omer, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, called the mass prisoner escape "bad news and a disaster."
It was the second mass escape from the prison.
In June 2008, up to 1,000 prisoners - almost half of them Taliban members - escaped after militants detonated a large truck bomb against the side of the compound.
Creator of Afghanistan documentary 'Restrepo' killed in Libya
Tim Hetherington, an esteemed photojournalist and an Oscar nominee for a gritty and harrowing documentary about the Afghan war, was killed in the war-torn Libyan city of Misrata, the president of the agency that represented him said Wednesday.
Hetherington received an Academy Award nomination this year for "Restrepo," which chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. He also worked in Afghanistan two years ago with CNN's Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Related:
In his own words: Afghanistan audio slide show
2010: Hetherington goes inside Afghan war
His photos from Afghanistan and more
'Three Cups of Tea': Served with a grain of salt?
The best-selling author of "Three Cups of Tea" and another book that cast light on the need to educate girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan may face a legal battle and a review from the book's publisher amid allegations that key stories in the books are false.
More:
'Three Cups of Tea': Served with a grain of salt?
Fact or fiction?
Overheard on CNN
2008 interview with Mortenson
Protesters in Kabul: 'Death to America'
A demonstration in Kabul on Thursday over the burning of a Quran by a U.S. pastor was peaceful, even if the rhetoric from protesters was not.
"The protesters were calling 'Death to America,' 'Death to Obama,'" protest organizer Abdul Fatah Jawad told CNN. "(W)e blame Terry Jones for his action (but) we also believe that American government is behind this burning of the Quran."
"Also, we have sent an official letter to the Afghan government demanding Terry Jones be sent to court in one of the Islamic countries for punishment," Jawad said.
The organizer said teachers, students and ordinary Afghans took part in the demonstration while police kept an eye. FULL POST
Rumsfeld: War on terror label a mistake
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says it was a mistake to call the Afghanistan war a "War on Terror.
Rolling Stone: Army manipulated visiting VIPs in Afghanistan
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is ordering an investigation into a scathing Rolling Stone magazine report that says the Army ordered soldiers trained in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting lawmakers to secure more troops and funding for the war, the military said Thursday. FULL POST
Suicide attack kills more than 25
At least 26 civilians were killed in a suicide attack at the office of a district governor in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province Monday, officials said. Another 36 people were wounded. FULL POST
