Airstrikes

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Security forces in Nigeria have launched airstrikes against encampments of the Islamist militia Boko Haram as part of a major military operation in the country's northeast, military officials said Friday. The airstrikes hit one of the main rebel bases, in the Sambisa Forest Reserve south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, according to military officials cited by news agencies. The Nigerian military have also sent several thousand soldiers to the area in recent days.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Security forces in Nigeria have launched airstrikes against encampments of the Islamist militia Boko Haram as part of a major military operation in the country's northeast, military officials said Friday. The airstrikes hit one of the main rebel bases, in the Sambisa Forest Reserve south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, according to military officials cited by news agencies. The Nigerian military have also sent several thousand soldiers to the area in recent days.

Two key Republican senators said Sunday they supported NATO efforts to target airstrikes at Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, even after a strike apparently resulted in the death of one of Kadafi's sons and three grandchildren. "In my view, wherever Kadafi goes, he is the legitimate military target. He's the command and control source," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services committee, said on "Fox News Sunday. " "I'd like to have a pour-it-on approach to get this over with.

BEIRUT - A Syrian opposition group said Monday that more than 42 soldiers were killed and  100 others remained unaccounted for in reported Israeli airstrikes Sunday outside Damascus, providing the first unofficial accounting of casualties in attacks that raised concerns about an escalation of the more than 2-year-old Syrian conflict. In Israel, meanwhile, officials continued to predict that Syrian retaliation was unlikely, as Israelis debated how much further their forces could go without sparking an unwanted war with Syria or its allies.

The Myanmar military has admitted using airstrikes against rebels in the country's north, despite earlier government statements saying planes were being used only to supply troops. The strikes signal an escalation in clashes between government forces and the ethnic Kachin rebels, who seek greater autonomy. Video recorded from the rebel trenches by an aid group and shared with the BBC shows attack helicopters firing toward the ground. The military acknowledged the strikes Wednesday on state television, the Associated Press reported.

The multinational coalition attacking Libya with airstrikes Tuesday night hit the nation's capital, Tripoli, and its surroundings for the fourth time in the last several days. At least three loud explosions, presumably coalition airstrikes or missiles, shook the earth as antiaircraft and tracer fire lighted up the sky about 9 p.m. In central Tripoli's Algeria Square, supporters of the regime began blowing their car horns and chanting slogans in support of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is calling for the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization to cut back on airstrikes in the battle against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, saying too many civilians have been killed. Karzai said that six years after the U.S.-led invasion, Afghans "cannot comprehend as to why there is still a need for air power." He told "60 Minutes" that there were alternatives to the use of airstrikes.

The Israeli armed forces and militants based in the Gaza Strip exchanged attacks Saturday in a sharp escalation of violence that killed nine Palestinians and one Israeli. Palestinian sources said five Islamic Jihad militants were killed in an initial Israeli airstrike near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, including a prominent maker of rockets. Israeli news reports said the airstrike targeted a cell responsible for launching a rocket into Israel recently. The army said the strike was not in retaliation for an attack, but was instead a preventive action.

A mud-streaked gun truck careened to a stop on Libya's coastal highway here after speeding away from clashes with Moammar Kadafi's forces a dozen miles to the south. Rebel fighter Abdul Mahim Massoud shouted from the front seat: "Kadafi's people are killing us with tanks and rockets! We need your planes! Thank you, America! Thank you, France!" Two days earlier, this spot was well within government-held territory. Kadafi's forces had pushed to the outskirts of the rebels' de facto capital, Benghazi, about 80 miles north of here.

Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi suffered a significant defeat as his forces fled the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya, leaving behind a charred trail of smoking tanks and rocket systems destroyed by seven days of punishing allied airstrikes. Rebel fighters in gun trucks raced into the nearly deserted city Saturday, firing their weapons into the air and clamoring over tanks in a daylong celebration of horn-honking and flag-waving. With Kadafi's forces retreating to the south and west, exposing more armor to allied warplanes, the question now is how many working tanks and Grad rocket systems the Libyan leader has left, and how willing his soldiers are to continue facing airstrikes.

JERUSALEM - With three airstrikes against Syria since January, Israel has inserted itself forcefully into the "Arab Spring's" most intractable conflict, heightening fears that Syria's civil war could spiral into a regional conflagration. The bombings of targets near the Syrian capital - including two strikes in a 48-hour period beginning Friday - represent a risk-laden strategy based on the calculation that retaliatory attacks against Israel by Syria or its allies are unlikely. Still the bombings inevitably raised the specter of a broader regional war in the heart of the volatile Middle East.

WASHINGTON - Recent Israeli strikes inside Syria may have exposed weaknesses in the regime's air defenses and could embolden the U.S. and its allies to take more steps to aid rebels fighting the regime there, said lawmakers on Sunday. “The Russian-supplied air defense systems are not as good as said,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said on NBC's "Meet the Press. " Leahy, who heads the appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, said the Israeli defense forces were using American-made F-16 Fighting Falcon jets to launch the missiles against Syrian targets.

JERUSALEM -- Amid reports that Israeli warplanes struck a weapons cache in Syria this week, a senior Israel defense ministry official said Saturday his nation was closely monitoring unrest in its neighbor but remained confident that Syria's chemical weapons have not fallen into the hands of militants in Lebanon. Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, director of the ministry's policy and political affairs, also questioned media reports quoting an anonymous Israeli official as confirming the country's involvement in the military strike, which is believed to have taken place early Friday.

BEIRUT - Huge explosions were reported in Damascus early Sunday, just two days after a reported Israeli airstrike in Syria targeting surface-to-air missiles possibly destined for neighboring Lebanon and the militant group Hezbollah. Syrian state media also blamed Israel for Sunday's predawn onslaught, saying that Israeli jet fighters had launched rockets on the capital. The site targeted was a military research facility in Jamraya, just outside Damascus, state media reported.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli officials were silent Saturday about reports that their forces had launched an airstrike from the Lebanese skies onto Syrian soil. A military spokeswoman declined to comment on reports by CNN , the Associated Press and others that Israel had hit a weapons warehouse in Syria. Israeli officials have said repeatedly in the past that they would take action to prevent Syria's cache of chemical weapons from falling into the hands of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon or Al Qaeda-inspired extremists who have entered Syria to join the rebels there.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban and U.S. military were both at fault in a NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan this month that killed 17 civilians, including 12 children, according to an Afghan government investigation. The inquiry raised the number of civilian deaths from an earlier total of 11. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has completed an investigation of the same incident in Kunar province, but its report is still under review, a coalition spokesman said. The deaths of civilians in the Afghanistan war have been a highly sensitive political issue.

Col. Moammar Kadafi's forces intensified attacks in opposition-held cities, creating panic in the western town of Misurata, even as U.S. and allied warplanes broadened their airstrikes across Libya, U.S. military officers and witnesses said Wednesday. Despite the increasing presence of allied aircraft overhead, Kadafi has rushed to put down the remaining pockets of a rebellion that has threatened his rule. In Misurata, government forces resumed their assault Wednesday evening despite airstrikes for the second day on the outskirts of the insurgent-held city.

NATO airstrikes on a pair of hijacked fuel tankers killed as many as 90 people early today, according to Afghan authorities. Western military officials said they were investigating reports that the dead may have included dozens of civilians. The incident in the northern province of Kunduz threatened to reverse what Western officials had described as a dramatic drop-off in Afghan civilian casualties caused by coalition troops over the last two months. U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who assumed command of American and other Western forces in Afghanistan in mid-June, had made reducing civilian deaths and injuries accidentally inflicted by coalition troops a centerpiece of his strategy.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan killed 11 civilians, 10 of them children, in addition to the Taliban militants it was trying to hit, Afghan officials said. The strike late Saturday in the Shigal district of restive Kunar province near Pakistan was called by coalition forces after they and their Afghan counterparts came under an attack that killed one American advisor and badly wounded four Afghan troops. The American death was reported on Saturday, but details of the alleged civilian casualties only surfaced Sunday.

KABUL , Afghanistan -- A NATO airstrike killed four policemen and two civilians on a rural road in Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province, Afghan officials said Thursday. Fazel Ahmad Tolwak, governor of Deyak district, said the four police had attended a memorial ceremony for a deceased villager Wednesday and, on the way back, gave a ride to several members of the Taliban and two members of Tolwak's family. The police let the Taliban off, while the civilians remained in the vehicle, he said.