Still reeling from a bloody encounter with the Abu Sayyaf group in the south that claimed the lives of seven Marine soldiers over the weekend, the government’s law enforcers suffered another major blow Monday with the killing of eight Special Action Force (SAF) policemen in a guerrilla ambush in the northern province of Cagayan.

Seven other members of the Philippine National Police’s elite SAF team were wounded in an ambush by communist New People’s Army (NPA) rebels early Monday.

Just two days earlier, on Saturday, seven Philippine Marines were killed in a clash with Abu Sayyaf bandits in Patikul town in Sulu. Officials are still trying to determine if the incident was an “operational miscalculation” or a close encounter.

[Read more…]

A heavily-armed gang of nearly 300 Maoist rebels killed at least 24 people in an attack on a convoy of local Congress party leaders and supporters in central India, police said Sunday.

The land mine and gun attack on Saturday was the deadliest in three years, and the latest in a long-simmering conflict that pits the insurgents against authorities in the forests of mainly central and eastern India.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, who rushed to the Chhattisgarh state capital Raipur along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after the ambush, condemned what she called a “cowardly act” by the Maoists.

[Read more…]

At least seven Filipino marines and four Abu Sayyaf bandits were killed in a clash Saturday as the military launched an offensive against al-Qaeda-linked gunmen who have been blamed for recent kidnappings and of trying to sabotage a road project in the island province of Sulu, military officials said Saturday.

Nine other marines and about 10 Abu Sayyaf fighters were wounded in the gunbattle that broke around 6:40 a.m. Saturday and raged for an hour in the village of Tugas, Patikul municipality, military spokesman Brigade General Domingo Tutaan said.

[Read more…]

At least two Afghan police officers and two assailants were killed and two Afghan police officials, an Italian woman and other foreign nationals were injured after Taliban insurgents launched a massive attack involving bomb explosions and gunfire in the midst of one of Kabul’s diplomatic quarters on Friday.

The attackers, before holding up in a building in the Shahr-i-Naw locality, set off a bomb followed by numerous smaller explosions and gunfire and were still engaged in a gun-battle with security forces.

[Read more…]

The Afghan and coalition security force wounded a Taliban leader and killed two other insurgents during an operation in Qush Tepah district, Jowzjan province, yesterday.

The leader has operational control over a group of fighters responsible for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in multiple districts throughout Jowzjan.

[Read more…]