Hungary extends Afghanistan mission

Budapest, Hungary (31st March 2011): Hungary's defence ministry says the government has extended the mission of its troops in Afghanistan until October 2011.

Hungary has had troops deployed in Afghanistan since 2006. Their role includes training Afghan troops, providing security at Kabul airport and offering provincial reconstruction.

Two Hungarian soldiers were killed in 2008 and two in 2010.

British prison boss gets job in Afghanistan

A British Prison governor is due to swap Haverigg Prison (UK) for Afghanistan at the end April.

Governor Martin Farquhar will leave HMP Haverigg to take up a two year post as an advisor to the prison service in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Mr Farquhar’s new role as the head of prisons’ rule of law team, working with the provincial reconstruction team, is due to begin around June although he will leave HMP Haverigg at the end of April.

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NATO mobile patrol rammed

KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan man rammed his vehicle into NATO troops on patrol in southern Afghanistan Wednesday 30th March 2011, killing his passenger and a nearby pedestrian, the coalition said.

After three service members were struck, others on the patrol fired on the vehicle, which they believed had deliberately attacked them, NATO said.

The vehicle flipped into in a ditch, killing a passenger and hurting the driver, NATO said. The vehicle also hit and killed a pedestrian. Two other passers-by were injured in the incident in Kandahar city.

British Army Major Tim James, a spokesman for the International Alliance, said the driver was taken to a hospital. It was unclear if he was arrested.

6 French soldiers injured by suicide bomber

PARIS - The French military says six of its soldiers were lightly wounded in Afghanistan when a suicide bomber blew up his car near their transport vehicle on 30th March 2011.

Military spokesman Thierry Burkhard says Wednesday's attack also lightly wounded four Afghans, three of them children. The attacker was driving a car filled with explosives.

The attack took place in the Tagab region of Kapisa province, east of Kabul.

U.S Marine recovering after surviving bomb blast

A U.S Marine survived an improvised explosive device blast in Afghanistan earlier this month and faces surgery in California.

Corporal Russ Moseley, a 26-year-old in the 2nd Battalion 1st Marine Division based at Camp Pendleton, California was injured in the blast on March 13, 2011 his family says.

"He was working his dog and he stepped on an IED, and it shattered everything in his (right) foot and some other spots in that leg," his father, Clint Moseley, said in a call from Naval Medical Center San Diego. "He had the choice to keep it or have it amputated, and he chose to have it taken off so he'll have more mobility."

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Taliban seize Afghan district

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Taliban insurgents seized a district in Afghanistan's remote northeast after a brief battle with police, provincial officials said on Tuesday, underscoring the difficulty Afghan and foreign forces face in securing the increasingly violent region.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters had captured the Waygal district center in mountainous Nuristan province in the pre-dawn hours on Tuesday, said Mohammad Zarin, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

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Soldiers accused of stealing $1M in Afghanistan

FAYETTEVILLE - Two Fort Bragg soldiers, working along with an Afghan interpreter, embezzled nearly $1.3 million while deployed in 2009, according to court documents filed Thursday.

Edwin Vando and Juan Lamboy Rivera each were charged in a criminal information filed in U.S. District Court. The document, sometimes used in lieu of a grand jury indictment, alleges that the men took $1,297,959.31 in vendor payments owed to Abdul Wasi Faquiri Co. Ltd.

According to court documents, Vando and Rivera were sergeants with the 82nd Finance Battalion who were deployed to Camp Eggers in Kabul at the time, May to June 2009.

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Taliban kidnap 50 Afghan police

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Taliban insurgents abducted around 50 off-duty Afghan policemen in an ambush in a volatile province in northeastern Afghanistan, the militant group and provincial officials said on Sunday.

Taliban-led militants have stepped up their fight this year against the Afghan government and its Western backers at a time when Kabul has announced security responsibilities for seven areas will be handed to Afghan forces in July.

The policemen were abducted by militants in the Chapa Dara district of remote northeastern Kunar province after returning from neighboring Nuristan province where they had traveled to collect their salaries, Nuristan governor Jamaluddin Badr said.

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Lone Gurkha fights 30 Taliban - and wins!

Sergeant Dipprasad Pun has been honoured for single-handedly fighting off 30 Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

The Gurkha soldier got through more than 400 rounds of ammunition and an assortment of grenades during his extraordinary one-man stand on the roof of an isolated sentry-post.

At one point, when his gun could no longer fire, Sgt Pun resorted to battering one Taliban fighter, who was trying to scale the wall to attack him, over the head with the tripod of his machine gun.

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Germany sends more troops to Afghanistan

HEIDELBERG, Germany — The German parliament voted Friday (24th March) to send 300 additional soldiers to Afghanistan to man AWACS surveillance planes, and by doing so, free up other NATO crews to help the mission over Libya.

The vote was 407-113 with 32 abstentions. The decision is a compromise of sorts; Germany declined to join the mission to impose a no-fly zone over Libya as authorized by U.N. Resolution 1973.

Germany’s lack of participation in Operation Odyssey Dawn has evoked a mix of condemnation and approval.

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