Two Afghan Police Kidnapped and Beheaded

[SlowwHand]

Not clear on who? Who has this modus operandi?
I'll ask again. Jihad against who?
Real good way to gain respect for their outlook.

49 minutes ago

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Two policemen were kidnapped from their homes in southern
Afghanistan and later beheaded and their bodies dumped in the desert, an official said Saturday.
The killings occurred in Helmand province, the country's main opium poppy belt, said Ghulam Muhiddin, the provincial administrator.

He said it was not clear whether the Taliban or drug gangs were behind the murders. The men were abducted from their homes on the outskirts of provincial capital Lashkargah on Friday night. Their decapitated bodies were discovered Saturday, Muhiddin said.

Police launched an investigation but no one has been arrested, he said.

In other violence, meanwhile, a roadside bomb hit a police patrol in Helmand's Nad Ali district Saturday, killing a policeman and wounding five others, said Abdul Rahman, the provincial police chief.

Also in Helmand, in Sangin district, another roadside bomb killed two Afghan soldiers when it hit their convoy late Thursday, said Gen. Rehmatullah Raufi, an army commander. Four other troops were wounded and rushed to a nearby military base for treatment.

Violence has spiked in Helmand in recent weeks. Taliban rebels have purportedly vowed to defend the region's opium farmers from security forces who launched a massive campaign in Helmand earlier this week to eradicate poppies.

Authorities suspect the insurgents get part of their funding from the drug business.

And the horse you rode in on.

[KrazyHorse]

We should nuke Afghanistan.

[chequita guevara]

We should nuke Slowwhand.

[Fake Boris]

Slow, you realize it was probably a drug gang related affair?

[SlowwHand]

This is more the common style. Not beheading. One group prevalent does that act.
I really don't understand your comment, Che. I'm ready to say, "Ok **** you" to Iraq.

US hostage killed in Iraq By Ibon Villelabeitia and Waleed Ibrahim
26 minutes ago



BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The body of a kidnapped U.S. peace activist was found bound and shot in Baghdad, police said on Saturday, while President George W. Bush warned Americans of more fighting and sacrifice before U.S. troops could come home.

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Sunni and Shi'ite leaders, struggling to break a deadlock over forming a national unity government to tackle the threat of civil war, held the first coalition talks since the bombing of a Shi'ite mosque sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

Reprisal killings, which cost hundreds of lives and plunged Iraq into its worst crisis since U.S.-led forces invaded in March 2003, prompted Sunni parties to boycott negotiations.

Police said the body of Tom Fox, kidnapped in November with three colleagues by a group calling itself the Swords of Truth, was discovered on Thursday with the hands tied and a single gunshot wound to the head at a rubbish dump in western Baghdad.

The American, who had campaigned against what he called the dehumanization of the U.S. occupation, appeared to have been beaten with electric cables before his death, said a policeman who found the body beside a railway line.

The kidnappers, one of many armed groups that have seized more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis since the U.S.-led invasion, had threatened to kill the four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams unless U.S. forces and Iraqi authorities freed all prisoners in their custody.

There was no word on the fate of Fox's three colleagues.

BODY ON WAY HOME

A U.S. embassy spokeswoman said Fox's body was on its way back to the United States. She had no comment on his death.

Fears about Fox's fate were raised earlier this week when Arabic television station Al Jazeera aired a video dated February 28 showing only fellow kidnapped activists Briton Norman Kember and Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Sooden.

The three looked well and did not appear distressed.

Three years after U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, sectarian violence sparked by the February 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra has raised the specter of civil war, denting Americans' hopes for a troop withdrawal.

Iraq's divided political leaders are deadlocked over a new prime minister that has stalled the formation of a U.S.- sponsored national unity government of Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds, seen by Washington as essential to calm tensions.

One day after President Jalal Talabani postponed the first session of parliament until March 19 to give parties more time to agree on key posts, leaders from the ruling Shi'ite Alliance and the Iraqi Accordance Front, the biggest Sunni Arab political grouping, held talks to try to end the impasse.

The Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament, has said it will not succumb to pressure from Kurds and Sunnis to drop its choice of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whom critics say has failed to bring stability or prosperity.

Front spokesman Zafer al-Aani said the two sides had agreed to meet again on Sunday but had not discussed Jaafari.

After the mosque attack, which led to reprisals against Iraq's minority Sunnis, the Front said it would not return to coalition talks until a list of 10 conditions were met. Sunnis, dominant under Saddam, form the backbone of an insurgency.

BUSH CONFIDENT OF VICTORY

In his weekly radio address, Bush, battling low approval ratings before mid-term congressional elections in November, said he hoped Iraqi forces would be in a position to police more territory than U.S. troops by the year-end.

This would allow for a reduction in the 130,000 U.S. troops.

"The security of our country is directly linked to the liberty of the Iraqi people," said Bush. "This will require more difficult days of fighting and sacrifice, yet I am confident that our strategy will result in victory."

Fox, a father of two, expressed concern in an article the day before his abduction about the dehumanization of Iraqis.

"Dehumanization seems to be the operative means of relating to each other," he wrote. "U.S. forces in their quest to hunt down and kill 'terrorists' are ... not only killing terrorists, but also killing innocent Iraqis."

U.S. officials said they were still working to free U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, kidnapped in Baghdad on January 7, but had no new information. Her kidnappers had threatened to kill her by February 26 unless U.S. forces released women detainees.

On Saturday, gunmen killed a senior editor for Iraqi state television and his driver in Baghdad. Amjad Hameed was the second Iraqi journalist to be killed in a week.

Saddam is due to return to court on Sunday. He faces crimes against humanity stemming from the killings of 148 villagers after a failed assassination attempt in 1982.

(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim, Mussab al-Khairalla, Ross Colvin, Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad)