Bin Laden's cook sentenced to 14 years in jail

Ibrahim al-Qosi, who admitted helping Osama bin Laden avoid capture, expected to serve two years after plea deal.

Ibrahim al-Qosi pleaded guilty at the Guantánamo Bay court to conspiring with al-Qaida. Photograph: Janet Hamlin/AFP/Getty Images

A US military tribunal has sentenced Osama bin Laden's former cook to 14 years in prison, but he is expected to serve far less under a plea deal that remains secret.

Sudanese-born Ibrahim al-Qosi pleaded guilty last month in the war crimes court at the Guantánamo Bay US naval base to charges of conspiring with al-Qaida and providing material support for terrorism.

Qosi, 50, has been held at Guantánamo for more than eight years.

Military officials said it could be several months before his full plea agreement was made public. But the al-Arabiya television network based in Dubai quoted unidentified sources as saying Qosi's sentence had been capped at two years.

Qosi acknowledged that he knew al-Qaida was a terrorist group when he ran one of the kitchens in Bin Laden's Star of Jihad compound in Afghanistan.

Qosi, who met Bin Laden in Sudan and travelled with him to Afghanistan, also admitted helping the al-Qaida leader escape US forces in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan.

He said he had no involvement in or prior knowledge of terrorist attacks.

Qosi was the first Guantánamo captive convicted under the administration of Barack Obama, whose efforts to shut down the detention camp have been blocked by Congress.

Qosi's sentencing hit a snag because, according to the judge, the US military ignored orders to develop a plan specifying how prisoners would serve their sentences after conviction in the Guantánamo tribunals.

Qosi wanted to avoid serving his in solitary confinement. His plea deal required the convening authority overseeing the trial to recommend that Qosi serve his time in Camp Four, where detainees live communally under fewer restrictions than in the other camps. But military rules forbid housing convicted criminals with other detainees.

The judge, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Paul, said an assistant defence secretary ordered two years ago that the army and the military's Southern Command, which oversees the Guantánamo base, develop a detailed plan for housing prisoners after their conviction. "This has not been done," the judge said.

She said the absence of any written policy or plan was "especially troubling" because another trial was under way, for a young Canadian, and could produce another conviction.

She ruled that Qosi's plea agreement was valid because it called only for a recommendation that he be housed in the communal camp, and did not guarantee he would be.

The judge directed that Qosi remain in Camp Four for 60 days while the military worked out where he would serve the rest of his sentence.

Qosi is the fourth captive convicted in the tribunals created to try non-US terrorism suspects after the al-Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001. Two served short sentences and were sent home to Australia and Yemen.

The only other convict remaining at Guantánamo is Ali Hamza al Bahlul, a Yemeni who was an al-Qaida videographer. He is serving a life sentence for conspiring with al-Qaida and providing material support for terrorism.

"He is separated from the general population," said a Guantánamo spokesman, Navy Commander Brad Fagan. He declined to elaborate except to say that "he's by himself".

Defence lawyers said that once Qosi returned to Sudan he would enter a programme run by the Sudanese intelligence service that was designed to rehabilitate those with radical views. Nine other Sudanese captives had gone through the programme upon repatriation from Guantánamo, they said.

After completing the programme Qosi would live with his family but would be monitored to ensure he had no contact with radicals.
Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk

'Our problem is with Israeli gov't'

Turkey’s grievances with Israel concern its government and not its people, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday.

While some expect Turkey to be silent in the face of Israel’s “state terrorism” and “piracy,” Erdogan said, his nation will not stay silent.

“We will seek solutions in the framework of international law,” Erdogan was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying.

On Thursday Israeli diplomatic officials said Ankara was considering a number of steps to express its anger over the Gaza flotilla episode, including significantly downgrading diplomatic ties. However, Jerusalem has not been informed of any concrete moves.
The comments came amid reports that Turkey was considering not returning its ambassador to Israel and reviewing military, economic, cultural and academic cooperation if Israel did not apologize for the flotilla raid, return the seized ship, agree to an international investigation and offer compensation both to the families of the nine people killed and to the injured.

Turkey recalled its ambassador soon after the incident. Israel’s ambassador to Turkey, however, is still in Ankara and diplomatic channels of communication between the two countries are still open.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said unequivocally on Sunday that Israel had no intention of apologizing, and one diplomatic source said Thursday there were voices inside the government saying that not only should Israel not apologize, but it should demand a Turkish apology for facilitating the dispatch of a ship with terrorist supporters who beat Israeli soldiers trying to protect its territorial sovereignty.
Source:http://www.jpost.com

Gunmen attack hospital in Pakistan, kill 6 people

By BABAR DOGAR, Associated Press Writer
LAHORE, Pakistan – At least two gunmen disguised in police uniforms attacked a hospital in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore late Monday, killing six people in a failed attempt to free a captured militant being treated there, officials said.
The gunmen managed to escape but left without securing the release of the militant, who was part of a group of gunmen who attacked a minority sect in Lahore on Friday and killed 93 people, said Rana Sanaullah, the law minister of Punjab province, where Lahore is the capital.
The gunmen stormed Jinnah Hospital in a hail of gunfire shortly before midnight Monday and briefly took several patients hostage, Sanaullah said. One of the gunmen climbed on the roof to shoot at police who surrounded the building, he said.
Four of the six people killed in the attack were policemen, said the Punjab police chief, Tariq Saleem. Another seven people were wounded, he said.
Lahore has experienced a string of deadly attacks in the past year by militants who have declared war on both the government and minority groups in the country.
Friday's attacks against two mosques in Lahore targeted the Ahmadi sect, a minority reviled as heretics by mainstream Muslims. Seven gunmen attacked the mosques with assault rifles, grenades and suicide vests. At least two of the attackers were captured, while some died in the standoff or by detonating their explosives.
Police have said the men who attacked the mosques in Lahore were part of the Pakistani Taliban and trained in the North Waziristan tribal region. Authorities have arrested at least seven other men allegedly linked to the attacks who were members of a variety of banned militant groups.
Source:http://news.yahoo.com

Netanyahu cancels upcoming meeting with Obama

By the CNN Wire Staff

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled this week's scheduled meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Israeli government officials said Monday. The two leaders were slated to meet Tuesday during a visit by Netanyahu to Washington.
Netanyahu also decided to cut short a visit to Canada and return to Israel, according to an e-mail statement from his media adviser.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet with President Obama on Tuesday.

Netanyahu's cancellation of the meeting came in the wake of international condemnation of Israel after Israeli soldiers stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid intended for Palestinians in Gaza, leaving at least nine people dead in the resulting violence.
Israel claimed it was defending itself, with the Israel Defense Forces saying the soldiers' lives were in danger after they were attacked with "severe physical violence, including live fire, weapons, knives and clubs."
Several nations, however, have condemned the military action and called for an investigation.
Obama spoke on the phone with Netanyahu Monday morning, according to a statement from the White House press office. He "said he understood the prime minister's decision to return immediately to Israel to deal with today's events ... (and) agreed to reschedule their meeting at the first opportunity."
Obama "expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today's incident, and concern for the wounded," the statement noted. He "also expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances around this morning's tragic events as soon as possible."
Netanyahu and Obama were set to discuss, among other things, the recently completed U.N. conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, according to an earlier statement from the Israeli government.
The final document released by participants in the month-long conference, which ended Friday, called for a 2012 conference of all Middle Eastern states to move forward on a 1995 proposal for a nuclear-free Mideast. The document also called on Israel to sign the treaty and place "all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards."
Israel is not a member of the NPT and has neither confirmed nor denied that it has a nuclear weapons stockpile.
The Israeli government said in a statement the conference's document is "deeply flawed and hypocritical" and said it "ignores the realities of the Middle East and the real threats facing the region and the entire world." The statement also complained that Israel is singled out in the document and Iran, which is a signatory to the NPT, is not mentioned.
The United States signed onto the document, but Obama National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones said the U.S. government has "serious reservations."
Source:http://edition.cnn.com

9 dead as Israeli forces storm Gaza aid convoy

By the CNN Wire Staff

The international community on Monday condemned an Israeli naval commando raid on a flotilla carrying aid for Palestinians in Gaza, leaving 9 people dead.

Israel claimed it was defending itself, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) saying the soldiers' lives were in danger after they were attacked with "severe physical violence, including live fire, weapons, knives and clubs."

The Free Gaza Movement, one of the organizers of the aid, said that Israeli commandos dropped from a helicopter onto the deck of one of the ships early Monday and "immediately opened fire on unarmed civilians."

A senior Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in an independent account cleared by military censors, said Israeli troops were planning to deal with peace activists on a Gaza-bound flotilla, "not to fight."

The military official said most of the nine deaths were Turks. Twenty people were wounded. Seven Israeli soldiers were also wounded, one seriously.

All six boats in the flotilla were boarded according to the IDF but only one, the Mavi Mamara, offered resistance; the other five surrendered peacefully, the military said.

A host of nations condemned the military action and called for an investigation.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said the United States "deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy."

On Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled Tuesday's scheduled meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, according to Israeli government officials.

World reaction

The United Nations Security Council began an emergency meeting at 1 p.m. ET Monday on the incident.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he was "shocked by reports of killing of people in boats carrying supplies to Gaza. I condemn the violence and Israel must explain."

The Spanish and French governments called the action "disproportionate." The Italian foreign minister asked the European Union to investigate, and several nations, including Greece and Sweden, were summoning their Israeli ambassadors.

An indignant Turkey recalled its ambassador from Israel, canceled three planned military exercises with the Israeli military and called home its youth national football team, which had two games scheduled in Israel, said Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Chile, but will return after meeting with the Chilean president, Arinc said. The chief of the Turkish military was cutting short a trip to Egypt. The Turkish foreign minister, in Venezuela, was calling the United Nations Security Council to an emergency meeting, Arinc said.

"This operation will leave a bloody stain on the history of humanity," Arinc said. A Turkish group, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation or IHH, was one of the organizers of the flotilla, but people from various nations were aboard.

In a statement, Bahrain called it a "barbaric attack" on the part of Israel.

Israeli military gives version of flotilla incident

The British Foreign Minister William Hague said: "We have consistently advised against attempting to access Gaza in this way, because of the risks involved. But at the same time, there is a clear need for Israel to act with restraint and in line with international obligations."

The flotilla was being taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod, according to IDF.

Fifteen of the people captured were transferred to an Israeli prison in Beer Sheva, a spokesman for the Israeli Prison authority said Monday.

The Free Gaza Movement, one of the groups sponsoring the flotilla, disputed Israel's claim of violence by people aboard the ships.

"At about 4:30 am, Israeli commandos dropped from a helicopter onto deck of Turkish ship, immediately opened fire on unarmed civilians," said a post on the group's Twitter page.

Video aired on CNN sister network CNN Turk showed soldiers abseiling onto the deck of a ship from a helicopter above. The boarding of the ships took place more than 70 nautical miles outside Israeli territorial waters, according to IHH.

The Turkish foreign ministry said the incident "might cause irreversible consequences" in the nation's relationship with Israel.

"Israel has once again clearly demonstrated that it does not value human lives and peaceful initiatives through targeting innocent civilians," the statement said. "We strongly condemn these inhuman acts of Israel."

Meanwhile, a protest that began outside the Israeli embassy in Istanbul on Sunday continued into Monday. Although largely peaceful, police did use water cannons at one point to keep demonstrators at bay. Israel issued a "serious travel warning" for Israelis visiting Turkey. Those planning to travel to Turkey were asked to postpone their trip, while those in Turkey were advised to stay indoors.

The Israeli PM office has issues a serious travel warning for Israeli travelers visiting Turkey. The warning calls Israelis who are about to travel into Turkey to postpone their trip and for Israelis in Turkey to remain indoors and avoid presence in the city centers.

In Gaza, where the flotilla was headed, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called for global support of the Palestinian cause.

"The Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla is an ugly crime and against international law and this reflects the nature of the criminal Israeli occupation," Zuhri said. "We call upon the free world Arab and Muslim world to stand in support and help and support the international activists who have been subjected to killing in the middle of the sea."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for three days of mourning in the Palestinian territories to honor the lives lost.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev accused the leaders of the flotilla of looking for a fight.

"They wanted to make a political statement. They wanted violence," according to Regev, who said Israel wanted a peaceful interception of the ships trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza. "They are directly responsible for the violence and the deaths that occurred."

The convoy of boats approached Gaza in defiance of an Israeli blockade and had been shadowed by three Israeli warships. Free Gaza had reported Sunday that they had been contacted by the Israeli navy.

The boats left European ports in a consolidated protest organized by two pro-Palestinian groups to deliver tons of food and other aid to Gaza to break a blockade imposed by Israel in 2007.

The maritime convoys were organized by both the Free Gaza Movement and the IHH, a humanitarian relief foundation affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood religious group.

Israel said Sunday that Western and Turkish authorities have accused IHH of having "working relations" with different terrorist organizations.

Source:http://edition.cnn.com

Pakistan lifts Facebook ban after page removed

By BABAR DOGAR, Associated Press Writer 

LAHORE, Pakistan – Pakistan lifted a ban on Facebook on Monday after officials from the social networking site apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents, a top information technology official said.
The move came almost two weeks after Pakistan imposed the ban amid anger over a page that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.
"In response to our protest, Facebook has tendered their apology and informed us that all the sacrilegious material has been removed from the URL," said Najibullah Malik, secretary of Pakistan's information technology ministry, referring to the technical term for a Web page.
Facebook assured the Pakistani government that "nothing of this sort will happen in the future," Malik said.
Officials from the website could not immediately be reached for comment. They said earlier the contents of the "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" page did not violate Facebook's terms.
The page encouraged users to post images of the prophet to protest threats made by a radical Muslim group against the creators of the American TV series "South Park" for depicting Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode earlier this year.
Pakistan blocked Facebook on May 19 following a ruling by one of the country's highest courts. The Lahore High Court reversed its ruling Monday because of Facebook's response, paving the way for the government to restore access, Malik said.
The government will continue to block some Web pages that contain "sacrilegious material," but Malik declined to specify which ones.
The Facebook controversy sparked a handful of protests across Pakistan, many by student members of radical Islamic groups. Some of the protesters carried signs advocating holy war against the website for allowing the page.
Bangladesh also decided to block Facebook on Sunday but said it would restore access to the site if the offensive material was removed.
It is not the first time that images of the prophet have sparked anger. Pakistan and other Muslim countries saw large and sometimes violent protests in 2006 when a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad, and again in 2008 when they were reprinted. Later the same year, a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber attacked the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, killing six people.
Anger over the Facebook controversy also prompted the Pakistani government to block access to YouTube briefly, saying there was growing sacrilegious content on the video sharing website. The government restored access to YouTube last week but said it would continue to block videos offensive to Muslims that are posted on the site.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com

Robbers use tea instead of guns to rob Iraqi bank

By the CNN Wire Staff
Robbers stole $5.5 million from a southern Iraqi state bank after giving guards tea laced with a sleeping drug, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.
No shots were fired during the incident Friday at a bank near Najaf, the Interior Ministry said. The money is the equivalent of 6.5 billion Iraqi dinars.
In recent months, there has been a spike of similar incidents and authorities believe that insurgents were behind them to fund their military operations
Earlier this week, 15 people died in southwestern Baghdad after a brazen series of jewelry store heists on Tuesday in which bandits made off with gold and money.
In this latest incident, robbers had an associate among the bank's guard force give drugged tea to the guards, officials said.
After the guards passed out, the robbers entered the bank and made off with the money.
Two people were arrested, but police were not able to recover any of the money. The Interior Ministry said it appears the two are poor people trying to make money and are not part of a terrorist organization.
Members of the bank's guard force are being investigated, the Interior Ministry said.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com

Turkish warplanes pound Kurdish rebel targets in Iraq

Turkish warplanes launched a series of cross-border air raids against suspected Kurdish separatist fighters in northern Iraq on Thursday, Turkey's semi-official Anatolian News Agency reported.
A Turkish military source told CNN Turk, CNN's sister network, that the military scrambled jets to carry out the attack after a group of suspected fighters were detected on Iraqi territory, approaching Turkey's mountainous border with Iraq.
Residents of the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, where a civilian airport doubles as an airbase for the Turkish Air Force, told CNN they heard the unmistakable roar of Turkish F-16 warplanes taking off Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Firat News Agency, widely believed to be a media arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, announced on its website that Turkish warplanes bombed three mountainous regions in northern Iraq on Thursday afternoon.
The Turkish security forces have been battling PKK guerrilla fighters in the predominantly Kurdish region of southeastern Turkey for more than 25 years. More than 30,000 people, mostly ethnic Kurds, have been killed in the conflict.
Kurdish fighters appear to have recently stepped up their attacks on Turkish security forces, as often happens during the summer months.
Since April 26, the Turkish military said, 12 of its soldiers have been killed in a series of attacks in the Turkish southeast. Troops are currently conducting operations in a number of locations in this turbulent region.
For the past several years, Washington, which officially labels the PKK a terrorist agency, has shared "real-time intelligence" with its Turkish NATO allies about PKK activities in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Turkey has long pressured the Iraqi government to do more to rein in Kurdish separatists that operate in the border area.
On May 7, the Turkish military said, it bombed suspected PKK targets in northern Iraq, after a unit of Turkish special forces troops came under fire from across the frontier.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com

Pakistan blocks Facebook over Prophet Mohammad online competition row

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to block Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad.  

The order followed a decision by the Lahore High Court temporarily banning Facebook in Pakistan after the country's media reported that the competition would be held on May 20.

"The court has ordered the government to immediately block Facebook until May 31 because of this blasphemous competition," Azhar Siddique, a representative of the Islamic Lawyers Forum who filed a petition in the Lahore High Court, said.

"The court has also ordered the foreign ministry to investigate why such a competition is being held." A spokesman for the PTA, the country's telecommunication watchdog, said the government on Tuesday ordered Internet providers to block only the Facebook page showing these caricatures.

But on Wednesday the court ordered the entire Facebook site blocked. Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.

By late afternoon, Facebook was unavailable to Pakistan's computer users, although Blackberries and other mobile devices appeared able to access the site.

But some warned the court's response could backfire. "Blocking the entire website would anger users, especially young adults, because the social networking website is so popular among them and they spend most of their time on it," said the CEO of Nayatel, Wahaj-us-Siraj.

"Basically, our judges aren't technically sound. They have just ordered it, but it should have been done in a better way by just blocking a particular URL or link."

On the Facebook information page for the contest the organisers described it as a "snarky" response to Muslim bloggers who "warned" the creators of the Comedy Central television show "South Park" over a recent depiction of the Prophet in a bear suit.

"We are not trying to slander the average Muslim," the Facebook page creators wrote. "We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Mohammad depictions that we're not afraid of them. That they can't take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us into silence." Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries.

Around 50 people were killed during protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of caricatures.

Pakistan also blocked the popular video sharing site YouTube in 2007 for about a year for what it called un-Islamic videos.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Suicide bomber kills 18 in attack on Nato convoy (Kabul)

A suicide car bomber has killed 18 people - including five US soldiers - and injured 52 more in the deadliest attack this year on foreign troops in the Afghan capital.
Most of the victims were Afghan civilians caught in the blast when the bomber targeted a Nato-led convoy.

The bomber struck during rush hour close to the parliament.

Taliban militants said they had carried out the attack, using a van packed with 750kg (1,650lb) of explosives.
Despite tight security, the suicide bomber managed to drive into the city in a car laden with explosives.

The convoy was attacked on the Darulaman road, one of the main roads in the city.
A spokesman for the Nato-led international peacekeeping force Isaf confirmed that six of its soldiers had been killed. Apart from the five US soldiers, one Canadian is believed to have been killed.
Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen "strongly" condemned the attack, but said the alliance remained "committed to its mission to protect the Afghan people and to strengthen Afghanistan's ability to resist terrorism".
Five military vehicles were damaged and more than a dozen civilian vehicles, including a bus, were also caught in the blast.
The BBC's Mark Dummett in Kabul says that, as is often the case in such attacks, Afghan civilians seem to have borne the brunt of the explosion.
Eyewitness Obiadullah Saddiqyar was on his way into work when the bomb detonated. He described the scene as "totally chaotic".
He told the BBC: "I witnessed the bomb this morning at around 0815 [0345 GMT]. I saw many people dead and many injured who were taken to hospital.
"Among the dead there were lots of women and girls - I heard later that they were students going to university. I also saw one of my colleagues full of blood in the back of a police car, also being taken to hospital.
"This situation really made me cry for the bloodshed and the innocent people who were killed and injured."
Afghan police have set up extra checkpoints throughout the city this year following a series of attacks by gunmen and bombers on government offices and hotels, our correspondent says.
They say they have arrested several men planning suicide attacks but it is impossible to stop and search every car, so these attacks seem certain to continue, he says.
Major offensive
Afghan President Hamid Karzai described the attack as "heartbreaking".
"We are condemning the attack in the strongest terms. I hope Afghanistan will soon get out of this suffering, God willing," he said at a news conference broadcast on national television.
President Karzai has recently returned from a trip to Washington where he hoped to gather support for his policy of reconciliation with certain elements of the Taliban.
Afghan officials are also preparing for a jirga (English: grand council) of tribal leaders, during which ways to promote peace in Afghanistan will be discussed.
Meanwhile a military offensive in the southern province of Kandahar, a key Taliban stronghold, is being planned.
Earlier this year Nato and Afghan forces launched a major offensive against militants entrenched in neighbouring Helmand province and security forces are still engaged in operations around Helmand.
Nato and the US have deployed thousands of extra troops in Afghanistan, where numbers are expected to peak at 150,000 in August under a strategy designed to bring a swift end to the long-running insurgency.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk

NATO Attack Killed Afghan Civilians (Protesters claims)

Hundreds of protesters brandished sticks, threw stones and burned an American flag Friday in eastern Afghanistan as they accused NATO forces of killing civilians in an overnight raid, but the alliance said eight insurgents were killed in the attack.

More than 500 people poured into the streets in the Surkh Rod district of Nangahar province to protest the raid by international forces that they claim killed at least nine civilians. A father and his four sons and four members of another family were killed in the NATO operation, said Mohammed Arish, a government administrator in Surkh Rod.

''They are farmers. They are innocent. They are not insurgents or militants,'' Arish told The Associated Press by phone.

However, NATO said the raid involving allied and Afghan forces targeted insurgents. Eight -- including a Taliban sub-commander -- were killed in a firefight, said alliance spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks.

Shanks revised NATO's original version of events, saying militants had not fired rocket-propelled grenades at coalition forces, as had been first believed. He said the alleged insurgents had fired machine guns.

Two other people were captured during the operation, and weapons and communications gear were confiscated at the targeted compound, Shanks said.

Locals paraded out several of the bodies during the demonstration.

Protesters blocked roads, hurled stones at a government office and sought to march toward the provincial capital of Jalalabad, before being turned back by police, Arish said. At least three people were injured during a clash with police, the Nangahar governor's office said.

Zemeri Bashary, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said police investigators were heading to the area to look into whether the people killed were civilians or insurgents.

Safiya Sidiqi, a parliamentary lawmaker from Nangahar, accused allied forces in the operation of relying on flawed intelligence fed by enemies of the state who want to drive a wedge between civilians and the government.

''Unfortunately, they are getting wrong intelligence reports, or the spies and these intelligence people are purposely providing incorrect information,'' she said by phone.

She said the men killed were all members of the same extended family, and that many were farmers who had been working late in the fields.

Late last month, NATO and Afghan forces led a nighttime raid on Sidiqi's home in eastern Afghanistan and fatally shot her brother-in-law, she said then. At that time, NATO said coalition forces had killed an armed individual during a pursuit of a suspected Taliban accomplice. It did not identify the person killed.

Civilian deaths at the hands of NATO forces are highly sensitive. Public outrage over such deaths led Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the NATO commander, last year to tighten the rules on combat if civilians are at risk.

McChrystal has ordered allied forces to avoid night raids when possible and bring Afghan troops with them if they do enter homes after dark. But he stopped short of seeking a complete ban sought by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who discussed the issue in meetings this week with U.S. officials in Washington.

Also Friday, NATO said at least nine insurgents were killed the previous night during a pursuit of suspected militants in a rural area in the Tarnak Wa Jaldak district of eastern Zabul province.

NATO also confirmed an Afghan and allied operation in the morning a day earlier north of Qarabagh in southeastern Ghazni province left at least nearly a dozen militants dead. On Thursday, Ghazni police chief Khial Baz Sherzai said 14 militants had been killed in the area.

NATO spokesman Shanks said an American service member died in an insurgent attack in the east Friday, but he did not provide details. The alliance said another service member died a day earlier following in a roadside bombing in the restive south. NATO has not indicated the nationality of the service member, citing a policy of deferring to member nations.

With the deaths, NATO has lost 23 service members in Afghanistan this month.

Violence has been rising in the southern province of Kandahar. NATO and Afghan government forces are gearing up for a major operation in the region to root out Taliban insurgents in the region. NATO leaders believe the operation will be crucial to the outcome of the war.

In eastern Paktiya province Friday, governor Juma Khan Hamdard narrowly escaped an attack when a suicide bomber leapt onto a vehicle convoy the governor was riding in as he left a lunchtime poetry reading in the provincial capital, Gardez, the governor's spokesman said.

The suicide bomber blew himself up as he jumped down onto the convoy from a wall, said provincial government spokesman Rahullah Samon. The head of the Paktiya provincial council, Shah Yasta Gul, said a civilian was killed and four other people injured.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com