Death Toll 07/29 - 07/31/03

Afghan police killed in ambush


Monday, 28 July

Six Afghan policemen have been killed in an ambush by suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters, provincial officials say.

A spokesman for the governor of Helmand Province said the men died when their vehicle was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles.

The policemen were ambushed late on Sunday.

News of the attack came soon after a senior official in another southern province appealed for help from US-led coalition forces.



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Tribal Fighters Kill Up to 150 in Congo

July 29, 2003, 10:05 AM EDT

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Thousands of tribal fighters attacked three villages in volatile northeastern Congo with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, killing as many as 150 people, a commander of a rival group said Tuesday.

Some 3,000 men, mostly from the Lendu tribe, staged early morning raids on Drodro, Largu and Blukwa on Friday to loot and kill, Saba Rafiki, security chief for a militia from the Hema tribe, said by telephone from Bunia, the provincial capital.

It was not possible to independently verify the report. Unarmed U.N. observers withdrew from all areas of Ituri province except the town of Bunia after two observers were abducted, tortured and killed in May.

Hema and Lendu fighters have been battling since 1999 for control of towns, villages and resources in Ituri. Aid groups estimate more than 50,000 people have been killed in the region since then.


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Colombia Town Buries 'Peasant Soldiers'

July 29, 2003, 6:53 PM EDT

CARMEN DE APICALA, Colombia -- Mournful relatives and townspeople buried three "peasant soldiers" Tuesday, the first members of a new militia the government formed to bolster its war against a ruinous insurgency to die in combat.

The men were killed Sunday night when rebels wearing civilian clothes boldly attacked their sandbagged barracks in this tourist town, which had been considered a safe government-controlled haven 50 miles southwest of the capital, Bogota.

"They put a gun to the head of one of the soldiers who was standing guard over there and shot him dead," Gen. Jairo Ovalle, commander of the army's 6th Brigade, said while standing in front of the barracks and pointing to a guardpost at the corner next to a store selling farm products.

The guerrillas simultaneously attacked the guardpost at the other end of the street, killing the two militiamen there, then began throwing hand grenades and firing pistols at the barracks.


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Tourist hostage 'dies in Sahara'


Tuesday, 29 July

One of a group of 15 European tourists who were kidnapped in Algeria in March has reportedly died.

Media in Germany have reported that Michaela Spitzer, 45, died of exhaustion in the desert, although the authorities in Germany and Algeria declined to either confirm or deny the report.

The tourists are believed to have been abducted by Islamic militants. National television said her body had been found buried in the desert, while a leading newspaper quotes her ex-husband as saying that German police informed him of her death.


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Gunman Kills Eight at Yemen Mosque School

July 30, 2003, 3:33 PM EDT

SAN'A, Yemen -- A man opened fire randomly with an automatic rifle at a mosque school Wednesday in southern Yemen, killing a teacher and seven teenage students, police said.

The motive was not immediately known. Police identified the attacker as Mohsen Munsir, a retired soldier in his 40s.

Two students also were wounded when Munsir opened fire with a Kalashnakov inside the school, located in the southern province of Lahg, some 215 miles south of the capital San'a.

People in the mosque captured Munsir and turned him in, police said.

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5 Russian Soldiers Killed by Land Mine

July 30, 2003, 4:09 AM EDT

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia -- A land mine explosion shattered a military convoy near the border with rebel Chechnya, killing five Russian soldiers, officials said Wednesday.

The blast took place Tuesday evening near the village of Galashki, in the republic of Ingushetia which borders Chechnya to the west, said Nadina Khadziyeva, a spokeswoman for the Ingush interior ministry.

Fighting from the nearly four-year-old war in Chechnya occasionally spills into Ingushetia, largely in the area around Galashki, six miles from the border.




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Three Afghan Soldiers Die in Ambush

July 29, 2003, 10:20 PM EDT

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Suspected Taliban rebels ambushed government troops in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing three soldiers before fleeing into a nearby mountain range, officials said.

About 25 suspected rebels carried out the attacks in Naish, a village 40 miles north of the southern city of Kandahar, said Mohammed Akram, a regional police chief.

Armed with automatic weapons, the attackers first stopped a vehicle owned by the local aid group Afghan Humanitarian Development Society, Akram said. They forced the Afghan driver out and set his car ablaze.

They later opened fire on two military vehicles returning to Kandahar from neighboring Uruzgan province, killing the soldiers, Akram said.



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World Watches While We Die, Say Liberians

July 30, 2003

"All of the patients in JFK hospital in Monrovia will die this week - they have no food, no water and no medicine," says Wilson Tarpeh, a Liberian businessman and newspaper publisher. Tarpeh, who is in Minneapolis, has been in telephone contact with physicians at the medical facility and with other residents of the capital.

"We are pleading with the international community to hurry up, hurry up, but nobody is doing anything," he says. "It seems they are just going to let our people die." Tarpeh estimates that at least 10 percent of Monrovias residents are at immediate risk from lack of food and water and from disease. Aid workers believe 300 to 400 people are dying daily from cholera.

<snip>


At a White House press conference Wednesday, President George Bush said that he stands by the offer of aid for Liberia that he made six weeks ago before leaving on a five-nation Africa trip, but he reiterated the conditions he has said must be met. "Charles Taylor must go, the cease-fire must be in place, and we will be there to help ECOWAS," he said. "We're working to get those conditions in place, and we will continue working to get them in place until they are in place, at which point we will then take the necessary steps to get ECOWAS in place, so that we can deliver aid and help to suffering Liberians."



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U.S. Soldier in Iraq Killed by Land Mine

July 31, 2003, 8:53 AM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. soldier was killed Thursday when his armored personnel carrier ran over a land mine on the dangerous road from central Baghad to the city's airport, the military reported.

It was the second death reported by the military Tuesday, the first a soldier killed in a small-arms fire attack northeast of Baghdad late Wednesday.

The U.S. military in Baghdad said the mine exploded beneath a M113 armored personnel carrier, killing the soldier and wounding three others.


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U.S. Troops Kill Three Afghan Insurgents


July 31, 2003, 5:49 AM EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. forces killed at least three suspected insurgents spotted near an American base in volatile eastern Afghanistan, a U.S. military spokesman said Thursday.

Lt. Col. Douglas Lefforge said the three were part of a 10-man "enemy element" observed Wednesday night near the U.S. base in Asadabad, capital of eastern Kunar province near the Pakistan border.

"The firebase fired 120mm mortar illumination rounds as a warning, then fired high explosive rounds, killing the estimated three personnel," Lefforge said in an e-mailed statement from Bagram Air Base, headquarters of U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The rest of the suspected insurgents fled the area and a coalition ground patrol was dispatched to investigate further, Lefforge said.


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Afghan Religious Official Killed by Gunmen


July 31, 2003, 12:43 AM EDT

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Gunmen shot and killed a local Afghan religious official near the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar, police officials said.

Mullah Jinab, a member of the Ulema Shoora, or religious council, in Nakhohni, five miles south of Kandahar, was killed instantly in the Tuesday night incident, Mohammed Salim Khan, deputy chief of police in Kandahar, said on Wednesday.

Jinab was coming out of a local mosque after evening prayers when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire. The assailants escaped, Khan said.

"We don't know who did this but we will find out soon," said Khan. He added that police were trying to determine if the killing was a result of some personal enmity or was carried out by Taliban rebels.

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A sick and malnourished child lies in a 'Medecins Sans Frontiers' ('Doctors without borders) hospital in Liberia's capital Monrovia on July 30, 2003. Dozens of civilians have been killed in fighting between rebels and President Charles Taylor's forces for control of Liberia's second city of Buchanan, residents said on Wednesday. REUTERS/Luc Gnago




U.S. troops killed during the war in Iraq are seen in this photo combo. Top row from left: Cpl. Mark A. Bibby, Sgt. Jason D. Jordan, Sgt. Justin W. Garvey, Petty Officer 3rd Class David J. Moreno, Sgt. Michael T. Crockett, and Cpt. Paul J. Cassidy. Bottom row from left: Sgt. 1st Class Dan Henry Gabrielson, Sgt. Roger D. Rowe, Sgt. 1st Class Craig A. Boling, Sgt. Chad L. Keith, Spc. Jeffrey M. Wershow, and Pfc. Edward James Herrgott. (AP Photo/Files)

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