Convoy

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide car bomber targeting a NATO convoy in the northeastern Afghan province of Kapisa killed five civilians and injured at least 15 Friday, Afghan officials said. There were no reports of casualties among the personnel in the route clearance convoy, according to the NATO-led force. But the explosion collapsed two nearby houses, killing and injuring the people inside, said Mehrabuddin Safi, the provincial governor. Safi said the attack happened early in the morning in Jado Khail, a village in the restive Tagab district.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - At least 12 people were killed and 43 injured Sunday in bomb blasts targeting a candidate's convoy and the election offices of two others in northwestern Pakistan. They were the latest in a series of terrorist strikes that have cast a shadow over parliamentary voting scheduled for mid-May. In recent weeks, Pakistan has been rocked by bombings directed primarily at candidates and backers of three liberal, secular parties, including President Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party, which has led the civilian government for the last five years.

A convoy of Libyan military vehicles carrying troops loyal to ousted leader Moammar Kadafi arrived late Monday in this desert town in central Niger, one of Libya's southern neighbors, military sources said. The convoy of between 200 and 250 Libyan military vehicles included officers from Libya's southern army battalions, said the French and Nigerien sources. It probably crossed from Libya into Algeria before entering Niger, they said. It was not immediately clear whether the convoy included any members of Kadafi's family or other high-level members of his government.

KABUL, Afghanistan - On the day that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived in Afghanistan for an assessment visit, six Americans were killed Saturday in attacks by insurgents. Hours after Dempsey arrived, five Americans - three soldiers and two civilians - were killed when a bomb-laden vehicle exploded in Zabol province in the southeast. An Afghan doctor was also killed in the attack. Another American was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, military officials said.

A suicide bomber targeted Indian road construction workers and their police escorts, killing seven people and injuring 13 in southwestern Afghanistan, an official said. The convoy had been traveling on a main road toward the city of Khash Rod in Nimruz province when it was first hit by a remote-controlled bomb planted on a motorcycle, wounding one policeman, said Gov. Ghulam Dastagir Azad. The convoy stopped and a suicide bomber set off a secondary attack, leaving six policemen and an Indian worker dead, Azad said.

Attackers ambushed and shot up the first truck convoy of a U.N. famine relief effort intended to save 100,000 lives in the southern Sudan war zone, killing seven armed escorts, U.N. officials said today. They said a civilian driver and two assistants were wounded, and radio reports from the scene identified the slain escorts as members of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army. U.N. officials in Nairobi did not affix blame for the attack on the 14-truck convoy, but speculation centered on nomadic tribal warriors, army soldiers or government-sponsored militias operating against the rebels.

A new U.S.-escorted convoy of tankers has sailed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf and is heading for Kuwait, witnesses said today. Reporters in helicopters said that the convoy was composed of three tankers and three U.S. warships. Shipping agents said it was maintaining radio silence and the identities of the tankers was not yet known. It was the third inward-bound convoy of Kuwaiti tankers flying the U.S. flag.

A convoy of refrigerated trucks carrying food and other aid left Kuwait on Saturday for Lebanon, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA said. The agency gave no details about the amount of aid, which was approved by the Kuwaiti Cabinet a week ago. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are desperately short of water, fuel, food and medicine because of intense fighting in Beirut in recent weeks, according to the United Nations.

Armenian militants ambushed a convoy of vehicles in a disputed region of Azerbaijan, killing three people and wounding 24 in an ensuing gunfight with the convoy's Soviet troop escort, the official Tass news agency said Thursday. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, informed of the attack while presiding over the 28th Communist Party Congress in Moscow, told delegates that ethnic bloodshed in the region must come to an end.

Assailants ambushed a convoy of farmers along a rural road in western Algeria, slashing the throats of 17 people before escaping, the nation's media reported. The attack Sunday in Ouled Bouaza, about 200 miles southwest of Algiers, the capital, was one of the bloodiest in recent weeks in Algeria, where Islamic militants have waged a bloody campaign against the government since the army canceled 1992 elections that a now-banned Muslim fundamentalist party was strongly favored to win.

WASHINGTON -- Israeli warplanes struck targets Wednesday outside Damascus,  the Syrian capital,  according to Syrian and Western reports, amid  rising international fear that President Bashar Assad will lose control of his nation's stockpiles of chemical and advanced weapons. A Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the airstrike hit a truck convoy believed to be carrying antiaircraft weapons for Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.  The shipment was thought to have included Russian-made SA-17 missiles, the official said.  If such weapons were obtained by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, it could weaken Israel's regional military power and hinder its ability to launch airstrikes in Lebanon.

JERUSALEM - Israeli warplanes struck targets outside the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Wednesday, according to Syrian and Western reports, amid rising international fear that President Bashar Assad could lose control of his nation's stockpiles of chemical and advanced weapons. A Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed that the airstrike hit a truck convoy believed to be carrying antiaircraft weapons for Hezbollah militants in neighboring Lebanon. The shipment was thought to have included Russian SA-17 missiles, the official said.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide car bomber targeting a NATO convoy in the northeastern Afghan province of Kapisa killed five civilians and injured at least 15 Friday, Afghan officials said. There were no reports of casualties among the personnel in the route clearance convoy, according to the NATO-led force. But the explosion collapsed two nearby houses, killing and injuring the people inside, said Mehrabuddin Safi, the provincial governor. Safi said the attack happened early in the morning in Jado Khail, a village in the restive Tagab district.

TARIN KOT, Afghanistan -- A suicide car bomber attacked a coalition convoy near an entrance to the massive U.S. airbase in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing a coalition service member and two Afghan civilians, local authorities said. Ahmad Jawed Faisal, a spokesman for the Kandahar governor, said the suicide vehicle struck about 5 p.m. as an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) convoy passed about 100 yards from a gate leading to Kandahar Air Field. The blast also wounded four coalition service members and 18 civilians, the authorities said.

Moammar Kadafi's whereabouts remained a mystery Wednesday, a day after reports of a southbound desert convoy raised suspicion that the deposed Libyan leader might be seeking sanctuary in sub-Saharan Africa. Officials of Libya's rebel administration have given contradictory statements about Kadafi's whereabouts in recent days, a pattern that continued Wednesday. One rebel military official told the Associated Press that Kadafi was cornered, while another military aide said the rebels didn't know the ex-leader's whereabouts.

More than a dozen high-ranking loyalists of Moammar Kadafi made a desert getaway into neighboring Niger, U.S. officials said Tuesday, but there was no indication that the former Libyan leader or his sons had escaped. "We're confident that Kadafi didn't get out," said Jalal Gallal, a spokesman for Libya's transitional government. News that as many as 250 vehicles carrying members of Kadafi's inner circle, including his security chief, had crossed Monday into Niger added a dramatic twist to the manhunt for the strongman who ruled Libya for more than four decades.

U.S. warships, relying on deception and speed, today steered the third convoy of reflagged Kuwaiti tankers through the narrow Strait of Hormuz and into the Persian Gulf. The convoy set sail before dawn in a move that caught shipping sources by surprise. Washington had given no indication when the convoy might begin its journey. Sources at Lamnalco, the Dubai-based agent for the Kuwaiti ships, said the American flags for the convoy were still in its office. "Even the flags are still with us.

Sudanese soldiers shot at a U.N. peacekeepers convoy in the Darfur region, critically wounding a local driver barely a week into the force's mission, U.N. officials said. The United Nations condemned the attack, which occurred late Monday, and said it had protested to the Sudanese government. It said the supply convoy was clearly marked. The driver was hit by seven bullets, a tanker truck was destroyed and an armored personnel carrier was damaged, the U.N. said. The South African peacekeepers did not return fire and suffered no casualties, officials said.

A convoy of Libyan military vehicles carrying troops loyal to ousted leader Moammar Kadafi arrived late Monday in this desert town in central Niger, one of Libya's southern neighbors, military sources said. The convoy of between 200 and 250 Libyan military vehicles included officers from Libya's southern army battalions, said the French and Nigerien sources. It probably crossed from Libya into Algeria before entering Niger, they said. It was not immediately clear whether the convoy included any members of Kadafi's family or other high-level members of his government.

At a marathon closed-door session, Pakistan's parliament Saturday joined the country's intelligence chief in strongly condemning the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The lawmakers also threatened to prohibit NATO from ferrying military supplies into Afghanistan if Washington continued its campaign of drone strikes against militants. The head of Pakistan's powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, vehemently defended his agency's track record for hunting down and capturing Al Qaeda operatives.