Security Forces

CAIRO - They are a bedraggled front line, shock troops with scabbed faces and gunshot wounds, many of them boys with runny noses and sandaled feet, standing beyond police barricades with gasoline bombs, swords and stones. They are legion, angry young men and grade school dropouts without jobs, prospects or political ideologies. They battle Egyptian police through the fog of tear gas, advancing and retreating over charred streets and shattered glass. They are as persistent as horseflies, an endless buzz at the edge of protest.

CAIRO -- Egypt's main opposition coalition rejected talks with President Mohamed Morsi on Monday as anti-government protests gripped the nation for a fifth day and the army was given powers to arrest civilians. Six people died across the country, including a bystander shot by rubber bullets as clashes surged between protesters and security forces on the edge of Cairo's Tahrir Square. Four police stations were set ablaze, and prisoners escaped in the coastal city of Suez. Central security forces fired volleys of tear gas at rock-throwing protesters along the Nile in downtown Cairo, where most tourist hotels are located.

CAIRO - An Egyptian human rights groups reported this week that torture and police brutality, which helped spark a national uprising two years ago, have continued under the new Islamist-led government. Over the course of 2011 and 2012, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) documented more than 20 extrajudicial killings as a result of torture or "unnecessary" use of firearms by police forces, the group said in a report released ahead of the second anniversary of the Jan. 25 revolt that eventually toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.

KABUL, Afghanistan - At least two police officers were killed Monday when five gunmen armed with suicide vests and rocket-propelled grenades stormed the headquarters of the Kabul traffic police department, setting off a firefight that lasted more than eight hours, Afghan officials said. It was the second brazen assault in less than a week in the Afghan capital, which has enjoyed a measure of safety compared with other parts of the country in recent years. The national intelligence agency was attacked Wednesday.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday sought to reassure an anxious public that security will not be compromised when the bulk of U.S. forces leave next year, saying the country needs American aid, not troops, in order to take over the fight against the Taliban. Karzai said he expected the U.S. to continue training, equipping and paying Afghan national security forces. "Afghanistan will be more secure after the foreigners leave," Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul.

An Egyptian court granted an appeal by former President Hosni Mubarak and ordered a new trial into the killings of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 uprising, a move certain to inflame the political unrest that has upset the country's democratic transition. The ruling was a victory for the ailing Mubarak and his Interior minister, Habib Adli, who also won his appeal. Both men, who had been sentenced to life in prison, face other criminal charges and are likely to remain in detention until a new trial in the deaths by security forces of more than 800 protesters.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Rahmatullah, an illiterate young man with a wispy beard and remnants of teenage acne, may represent the last, best hope for Afghanistan's national army. Wearing an old Russian-style helmet and firing an American M-16 automatic rifle, he squinted as his hissing rounds found their target on a firing range at the national training academy. At his elbow was his first cousin Azizullah, a functionally illiterate Pashtun tribesman who crouched to fire his own M-16. The cousins decided in fall to join the Afghan National Army, which for a decade has struggled to mold itself into an effective fighting force.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan forces are preparing to take the lead in safeguarding more parts of the country in line with plans to assume full responsibility for security when most foreign troops withdraw by the end of 2014, President Hamid Karzai's government announced Monday. The next phase of the hand-over of security duties from North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led troops to Afghan soldiers and police will begin in two months and will give the national forces primary responsibility for defending 87% of the population, said Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who heads a transition commission set up by the government.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico will have a new 10,000-member security force that will be deployed to regions of the troubled country where violence and instability are greatest, President Enrique Peña Nieto said Monday. The president said at a meeting of the National Public Security Council that the force would consist of 10,000 members to start, though he did not say when it would be created. For the time being, the military will remain in the streets in an effort to maintain order. The federal police will add 15 units that will focus solely on kidnapping and extortion, he said.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Militants launched a coordinated assault on the main airport in the northwest city of Peshawar late Saturday, killing at least five people and injuring 45 others in an attack likely to renew questions about the government's ability to combat Pakistan's five-year insurgency. [Updated 11:57 a.m. Dec. 15: Authorities later raised the death toll to nine -- four civilians and five militants. ] Militants fired a volley of rocket-propelled grenades at Bacha Khan International Airport, damaging a section of the boundary wall, said Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain.