A roadside bomb killed two U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said on Sunday, the latest deaths in an escalation of violence that has put pressure on coalition leaders over their war strategy.

Thousands of U.S. Marines and hundreds of British soldiers have been fighting major new offensives in the past 10 days in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold and Afghanistan’s biggest producer of the opium that funds the insurgency.

The assault by U.S. Marines, Operation Strike of the Sword, is the first major operation under U.S. President Barack Obama’s new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan, which holds a presidential election on August 20.

It was launched with insurgency violence at its highest since the Taliban’s austere Islamist government was ousted in 2001 by U.S. and Afghan forces for failing to hand over al Qaeda leaders wanted over the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Violence has flared again throughout Afghanistan since the operation began on July 2, with attacks in traditional Taliban strongholds in the south and east as well as in relatively more peaceful areas in the north and west.

The Taliban backlash has put pressure on leaders in Washington and London, who say U.S. and other NATO-led troops have pushed back Taliban insurgents but that a lot of tough fighting remains to be done during the summer.

Obama told Sky News on Saturday the United States and its allies would have to evaluate Afghanistan again after next month’s election to see what other military or development steps might be needed.

THIRD SOLDIER DIES

The latest two soldiers to be killed by a roadside bomb died in Helmand on Saturday, a U.S. military spokeswoman said.

“The one attack in Helmand killed two Marines,” said spokeswoman Lieutenant Commander Christine Sidenstricker.

The U.S. military earlier reported four Marines were killed but Sidenstricker said the same incident in Helmand had been reported twice to officials in Kabul.

A third soldier serving with NATO-led forces in the south died on Friday from wounds received in June, the alliance said in a statement issued on Sunday. No other details were available.

Washington is pouring in extra troops under Obama’s new strategy, with numbers set to more than double to 68,000 by the end of the year. About 90,000 U.S. and NATO troops are already serving in Afghanistan.

British troops mounting their biggest operation of the campaign in Afghanistan have also suffered under the Taliban backlash, with 15 confirmed killed in a 10-day period, including five in two roadside bomb blasts on Friday.

Taliban casualty figures were not immediately available.

Britain has now lost 184 soldiers in Afghanistan since it joined the U.S.-led war, more than the 179 killed in Iraq since 2003, putting the Afghan campaign sharply into focus at home.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, the presidential palace said in a statement, and Karzai expressed his sympathy over the British casualties.

Brown told Karzai Britain would continue to help the Afghan people in the fight against terrorism and in building up Afghan security forces, the palace said. U.S. commanders have complained of a lack of Afghan troops in the latest operations.

One of the main goals of the new operation is to capture ground from the Taliban and hold it, something overstretched British-led NATO troops have so far been unable to achieve. It is also seeking to win over Afghans from the insurgency.

With the latest deaths dominating headlines, finance minister Alistair Darling said on Saturday British troops would get whatever equipment they needed despite a ballooning deficit putting pressure on the defense budget.

The media, military experts and opposition politicians have questioned the government’s strategy and its commitment to equipping troops properly. Britain has sent 700 extra troops for the presidential election period, taking its force to 9,000.

In Helmand, the main British military hospital on Friday coped with the biggest load of battlefield casualties suffered in a day since the Falklands campaign in the 1980s.

But politicians and military leaders have warned often in recent weeks that a bloody summer of fighting lay ahead.

(Additional reporting by Jonathon Burch in Kabul and Peter Graff in Helmand; Editing by Andrew Dobbie) – Reuters

As British troops moved into the village newly freed from Taliban control, they heard one message from the anxious locals: for God’s sake do not bring back the Afghan police.

U.S. and British troops have launched a campaign to seize control of Helmand province, about half of which was in Taliban hands, and restore Afghan government institutions.

But as they advance, they are learning uncomfortable facts about their local allies: villagers say the government’s police force was so brutal and corrupt that they welcomed the Taliban as liberators.

“The police would stop people driving on motorcycles, beat them and take their money,” said Mohammad Gul, an elder in the village of Pankela, which British troops have been securing for the past three days after flying in by helicopter.

He pointed to two compounds of neighbors where pre-teen children had been abducted by police to be used for the local practice of “bachabazi,” or sex with pre-pubescent boys.

“If the boys were out in the fields, the police would come and rape them,” he said. “You can go to any police base and you will see these boys. They hold them until they are finished with them and then let the child go.”

The Interior Ministry in Kabul said it would contact police commanders in the area before responding in detail.

When the Taliban arrived in the village 10 months ago and drove the police out, local people rejoiced, said Mohammad Rasul, a toothless elderly farmer who keeps a few cows and chickens in a neatly tended orchard of pomegranate trees, figs and grape vines.

Although his own son was killed by a Taliban roadside bomb five years ago, Rasul said the fighters earned their welcome in the village by treating people with respect.

“We were happy (after the Taliban arrived). The Taliban never bothered us,” he said.

Before the Taliban arrived, the police had come to his house with a powerful landlord he called a “tyrant,” who put a rifle in his face, searched through his compound and demanded money.

“If (the British) bring these people back, we can’t live here. If they come back, I am sure they will burn everything,” Rasul said.

MINES, SNIPERS

The British effort, Operation Panther’s Claw, has focused on the Babaji district north of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, an area of lush fields, vineyards and orchards, watered by carefully tended streams and canals fed by the Helmand river.

Taliban fighters have sown the area with homemade mines and sniper nests, inflicting the worst casualties of the war. At least 15 British soldiers have been killed in the past 12 days.

Further south, some 4,000 U.S. Marines have met less resistance after seizing three districts of the lower Helmand River valley in an air and ground assault.

The aim is to impose Afghan government control over most of the province in time for an August 20 presidential poll.

But commanders say holding the area for the longer term will depend on bringing in credible local security forces.

The United States has spent lavishly in the past eight years to build up the Afghan National Army (ANA).

But it left training the Afghan National Police (ANP) to Germany, which spent a fraction as much, sending a small number of civilian instructors.

The result is a police force that is widely acknowledged to be unprepared for work in a combat zone: the ANP suffered three times as many deaths as the ANA last year.

Washington is rushing to make up the gap, sending 4,000 military trainers to Afghanistan this year to focus mainly on professionalizing the police.

Entire police forces are being removed from districts and sent to remote locations for intensive eight-week training.

Major Al Steele, commander of Bravo Company of 3 SCOTS, the Black Watch, who met elders in Pankela, acknowledged their concerns but said foreign forces were working on it.

“We have heard a lot of complaints about the ANP, but the Coalition Forces and the ANA are working together well, and the ANP are getting better,” he told Gul Mohammad, squatting outside the elder’s mud-walled compound.

The elder shrugged and flipped his prayer beads.

“Every time we heard that new ANP would come. But the old ANP would come back and it would be just like in the past.”

“The people here trust the Taliban,” he said. “If the police come back and behave the same way, we will support the Taliban to drive them out.”

(Editing by Paul Tait and Myra MacDonald) – Reuters

Britain said on Friday eight soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan, its worst death toll in a 24-hour period, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown said troops faced a “very hard summer” battling insurgents.

Five troops on foot patrol were killed by two blasts, the highest death toll in a single attack.

Britain has now lost 184 soldiers in Afghanistan since it joined the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, more than the 179 deaths during its campaign in Iraq that began in 2003.

Fifteen soldiers, including four officers, have been killed in the past 10 days in the fight against Taliban insurgents.

The heavy losses threaten to damage British public support for the deployment in Afghanistan and further hurt Brown’s already poor opinion poll ratings ahead of a British parliamentary election due by mid-2010.

Most newspapers led their early Saturday editions with reports of the losses, with the right-leaning Daily Mail urging Brown to “back our troops — or pull them out.”

“We cannot go on as we are, watching the bravest and best of their generation dying at the rate of more than one a day … for an ill-defined cause and with inadequate backup,” it said.

The Times said the deaths recalled the worst moments of the 1982 Falklands conflict, when British troops retook the South Atlantic islands after an invasion by Argentine forces.

“In the last ten days, the British public has had to become accustomed to the daily ritual of grim … announcements,” said the newspaper.

Britain’s Chief of Defense Staff Jock Stirrup said British troops were winning in their mission to improve security in Afghanistan ahead of a presidential election.

“But it’s going to take time and alas it does involve casualties … Our people out there know what they are there to do and they know they are succeeding in it,” he said.

Brown said there was no question of pulling soldiers out of Afghanistan until the international community had finished its mission there and quelled the threat from the Taliban.

“This is a very hard summer — it’s not over,” Brown told reporters at the G8 summit in Italy.

“But it’s vital that the international community sees through its commitments,” he said.

“Our resolve to complete the work that we have started in Afghanistan is undiminished. We must help deliver a free and fair presidential election in Afghanistan.”

Britain has boosted troop levels to around 9,000 from 8,100 to improve security ahead of and during Afghanistan’s presidential election, due to be held on August 20.

DIFFICULT TERRAIN

Critics have said Britain is placing soldiers at risk by not deploying a big enough force and failing to give troops the equipment they need, especially helicopters and better armored vehicles to withstand deadly Taliban roadside bombs.

“I think we have responded to the demands of the military for extra equipment for particular things — night vision equipment and also for armored vehicles and the protection of these vehicles as well as the helicopters,” said Brown.

“I think you’ve got to accept that this is very difficult terrain. This is the season when we’re dealing with the Afghan Taliban.”

Most of those killed in the past few days have died as a result of bomb blasts, with the Taliban using increasingly sophisticated technology to detonate bigger and better disguised mines and bombs planted by the roadside.

The attacks are an attempt by the Taliban to stall a large-scale operation by U.S. and British troops across southern Afghanistan where the Taliban remain strong, especially in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

Britain has a variety of lightly armored vehicles in use in Afghanistan that have proved good at handling the rocky, desert terrain but have been torn apart by bombs.

Defense experts say Britain also needs to move many more heavy-lift helicopters to the region to help with ferrying large numbers of troops over the vast distances. Britain currently has just a handful of these helicopters in the Afghan operation.

(Additional reporting by Luke Baker in London; Editing by Jon Boyle) – Reuters

China has raised the death toll from ethnic rioting in its far west to 184 and detailed for the first time the ethnicity of those killed, while tension lingered over the city at the center of the strife.

The official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday that 137 of those killed in the mayhem on July 5 in Urumqi, regional capital of Xinjiang, were Han Chinese, who form the majority of China’s 1.3 billion population, including 111 men and 26 women.

Forty-six were Uighurs, the largely Muslim people of Xinjiang who share cultural bonds with Central Asian peoples. All but one of them were men. Uighurs make up 46 percent of Xinjiang’s 21.3 million people, according to government statistics.

Xinhua said the other person killed in the attacks that erupted last weekend was a member of the Hui ethnic group, which is Muslim but culturally akin to Han Chinese.

The brief report did not say whether the death toll included rioters who may have been killed by security forces.

The reaction on Urumqi streets to the official death toll reflected the deepening ethnic divide in Xinjiang, with Uighurs expressing disbelief in the number.

“That’s the Han people’s number. We have our own number,” said Akumjia, a Uighur resident, as he eyed security forces who had cordoned off a street where there was an outburst of protest near a mosque and then arrests on Friday. A security forces helicopter buzzed overhead.

“Maybe many, many more Uighurs died. The police were scared and lost control.”

Close to where he stood, what appeared to be a spray of bullet holes could be seen on the glass front of a Bank of China office. There were no bullets among the shards. The government has not said what kind of forces was used to suppress the bloody rioting. Many Uighur residents say they heard or saw gunfire.

Chinese authorities had delayed releasing the ethnic breakdown of the dead, possibly out of concern it would further inflame the situation.

Several Han Chinese residents said distrust toward Uighurs was likely to stay.

“This [new number] at least shows that the victims weren’t only Han people,” said Zhao Hong, a Han resident who said she saw some of the bloodshed from her home window before hiding.

“Uighurs also died … But then they blame Han for being so angry about the killing and looting.”

“A TOUGH BATTLE TO PROTECT STABILITY”

Beijing cannot afford to lose its grip on the vast territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China’s largest natural gas-producing region.

Zhou Yongkang, the top domestic security official in China’s ruling Communist Party, said the country now had to “vigorously prosecute this tough battle to protect stability in Xinjiang,” the Xinjiang Daily reported on Saturday.

Human Rights Watch said that the government had deployed some 20,000 troops in Urumqi since the riots of July 5, which broke out after security forces broke up a protest over the deaths of Uighur workers in far southern China.

“The government has promised a thorough investigation into the violence but has so far presented a skewed and incomplete picture of the unrest,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

“This raises serious doubts about its commitment to investigating all aspects of the violence rather than presenting a pre-determined version of the events.”

Urumqi is still tense, with thousands of troops and police deployed throughout the city. A brief demonstration broke out on Friday, the main Muslim day of prayer, after some mosques were opened briefly.

On Saturday, anti-riot troops continued to keep a close watch on Uighur residents, and loudspeakers on vehicles blasted warnings that they should stay at home and accept the government’s line on the unrest.

The Uighur language is related to Turkish, and some Uighurs refer to their desert and forest homeland as “East Turkestan.”

On Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called the killings in Xinjiang a “genocide.”

In Washington, two members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning the “violent repression” of the Uighur people by China. It was unclear how soon it would come to a vote in the House.

(Additional reporting by Lucy Hornby in Beijing and Ben Blanchard in Shanghai, and Reuters reporters in Washington; Editing by Jeremy Laurence) – Reuters

About 1,400 people are dying every week in a camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees from the country’s civil war, a British newspaper reports.

Quoting senior international aid sources, The Times reported on Friday that the death toll at the Menik Farm internment will add to concerns that the Sri Lankan government has failed to halt a humanitarian catastrophe.

Most of the deaths are the result of water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea, the paper said, quoting a senior relief worker it said spoke on condition of anonymity.

Women, children and the elderly were shoved aside in the scramble for supplies, it said.

The Menik Farm camp, in the northern district of Vavuniya, was set up to house the largest number of the 300,000 mainly Tamil civilians forced to flee the northeast as the military mounted an offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The government announced victory over the LTTE in May, ending a civil war that lasted decades.The Times said witness testimonies it obtained in May described long queues for food and inadequate water supplies inside the camp.

Women, children and the elderly, it said, were shoved aside in the scramble for supplies.

Aid agencies are being given only intermittent access to the camp. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was not being allowed in, The Times reported.

Toll controversy

The Times also said that its investigation had uncovered evidence that more than 20,000 civilians were killed, mostly by the army, in the final stages of the conflict.

But Sri Lankan doctors said at a news conference on Wednesday that they had deliberately overestimated the civilian casualties.

As government officials looked on, they claimed that the Tigers had forced them to lie, The Times reported.It quoted Mangala Samaraweera, the former foreign minister and now an opposition MP, as saying: “There are allegations that the government is attempting to change the ethnic balance of the area.

“Influential people close to the government have argued for such a solution.”

Mahinda Samarasinghe, the minister of disaster management and human rights, told the paper that “the challenges now are different”.

“Manning entry and exit points and handling dead bodies, transport of patients, in the post-conflict era are no longer needed,” he said.

Curbs on Red Cross

The Times further reported, quoting the ICRC, that the agency was closing two offices in the country.

One of these was in Trincomalee, which had helped to provide medical care to about 30,000 injured civilians evacuated by sea from the conflict zone in the northeast, the report said.

The other was in Batticaloa, where the ICRC had been providing “protection services”.

The ICRC has revealed that it has been asked to scale down its operations by the Sri Lankan authorities, who insist that they have the situation under control. – Al Jazeera

Chinese riot police broke up a small demonstration by Uighurs leaving Friday prayers in a Muslim Uighur neighborhood of Urumqi, arresting several who were taken away with hands above their heads.

A crowd of several hundred gathered near the White Mosque along with riot police with submachine guns as armored police vehicles blocked roads around the building and a helicopter hovered overhead, the first sign of unrest days after deadly rioting in the ethnically divided city.

“You see, this is how they treat Uighurs — like animals,” said one woman of what appeared to be only a localized flare-up.

Hundreds of Uighurs crowded into the mosque after authorities relented on a decision to close mosques for the main day of prayer to minimize ethnic tension.

Security forces have imposed control over Urumqi, but the afternoon prayers were testing the government’s ability to contain Uighur anger after Han Chinese, China’s predominant ethnic group, attacked Uighur neighborhoods on Tuesday.

Those attacks were in revenge for the deaths of 156 people in Uighur rioting on Sunday, the region’s worst ethnic violence in decades.

The initial decision to try to silence collective prayers could rankle, but thousands of troops and anti-riot police appeared ready to quell any fresh Uighur protests. Nearly all Uighurs are Muslim, but few adhere to the strictest interpretations of Islam.

Beijing cannot afford to lose its grip on the vast territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China’s largest natural gas-producing region.

SUSPENSION NOTICES

Other mosques frequented by Hui, a Muslim group culturally akin to Han Chinese, opened their doors on Friday after crowds of a few hundred worshippers began shouting.

Mosques in the overwhelmingly Uighur bazaar district of Urumqi earlier displayed notices that prayers had been suspended.

A cluster of Uighurs outside the big Dong Kuruk Bridge Mosque said they were angry and disappointed it hadn’t opened.

“We feel we are being insulted. This is our mosque. But we are not allowed in, while they let in non-believers,” said a young man, pointing out that Chinese security forces had been stationed inside and even in the minarets jutting out above an adjacent expressway.

“Under instructions from superiors, normal prayer will be suspended from today,” said a notice at the gateway of the nearby Guyuan Mosque. It was dated Wednesday.

“Anybody wishing to pray … please do so at home.”

China’s ruling Communist Party may fear that big Uighur religious gatherings could become another catalyst for unrest after a week of ethnic strife.

Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely Muslim and share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia, make up almost half of Xinjiang’s 20 million people.

President Hu Jintao, forced to abandon a G8 summit in Italy by the ethnic violence in Xinjiang, has said maintaining social stability in the energy-rich region is the “most urgent task.”

Hu described the Sunday riots as a “serious violent crime elaborately planned and organized by ‘three forces’ at home and abroad.”

“Three forces” is a term China uses to refer to religious extremists, separatists and terrorists it says menace Xinjiang.

There appears little likelihood China will slow its drive to punish those found guilty of killing Urumqi residents in the Sunday mayhem, when cars and buses were burned.

On Tuesday, thousands of Han Chinese, shouting for vengeance, attacked Uighur neighborhoods, and many Uighur residents said people died. The government has not released any numbers.

Authorities have posted notices in Urumqi urging rioters to turn themselves in or face stern punishment.

Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi.

(Additional reporting by Tyra Dempster in Urumqi, Ben Blanchard in Shanghai and Benjamin Kang Lim and Lucy Hornby in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie) – Reuters

The widely condemned trial of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi resumed on Friday, a week after the country’s military rulers ignored a plea from the United Nations chief to drop security charges against her.

Yangon’s Northern District Court heard testimony from legal expert Khin Moe Moe, Suu Kyi’s one remaining defense witness, legal sources said.

Suu Kyi, 64, faces five years in prison if found guilty of breaking a draconian security law that protects the state from “subversive elements.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a two-day visit to Myanmar a week ago, when he urged junta supremo Than Shwe to release Suu Kyi and more than 2,000 other political prisoners.

His request to see Suu Kyi was denied by Than Shwe and he left the country without any guarantees of democratic reforms.

Reporters and the public were kept away from Friday’s trial, which has been dismissed by critics as an attempt to keep the Nobel laureate out of planned multi-party elections next year.

Suu Kyi allowed an American intruder to stay for two days at her lakeside home in Yangon on May 4, which the authorities said was in breach of her house arrest terms.

The American, John Yettaw, and two of Suu Kyi’s housemaids, are charged under the same law, legislation her legal team says should not be applied because it is obsolete.

Leaders of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which won the country’s last election by a landslide in 1990 but was denied the chance to rule, complained they were unable to discuss the political situation with Ban when they met on Saturday.

In a statement released on Thursday, the NLD said Ban met for only 10 minutes with representatives of 10 opposition parties, whom he told to put aside their differences and take part in next year’s polls.

Critics say the election, the final part of Myanmar’s seven-step “road map” to democracy, will be a sham designed to give legitimacy to the regime and entrench nearly half a century of army rule in the former Burma.

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Alan Raybould and Jeremy Laurence) – Reuters

Five Sri Lankan doctors have recanted their allegations that thousands of civilians were killed in the final days of the government’s war with the Tamil Tiger separatists.

The doctors, who are being held by Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department, said on Wednesday that they were pressured into giving exaggerated figures.

“The LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] threatened doctors to give information to the outside and sometimes they came with a list of numbers,” Dr Thangarajha Sathyamoorthi said.

The doctors were arrested after giving a series of telephone interviews to the media stating that the Sri Lankan military had shelled civilian areas causing thousands of casualties.

“The majority of the people were killed and injured in crossfire and when people were trying to come into the army-controlled area. But we were ordered to exaggerate the figures,” Dr V Shanmugarajah said.

Death toll

The doctors said that fewer than 1,000 civilians were killed between late January and May 18, when the military declared victory in the more than two-decade-long civil war.

“Totally there were around 350 to 400 people killed from April 15 to May 15,” Thurairajah Varatharaja, another doctor, said. He said another 300 to 350 civilians were killed and up to 650 were injured from late January to April 15.

Sam Zarifi, the Asia-Pacific director for Amnesty International, questioned whether the doctors’ latest statement could be relied upon after weeks in custody.”Given the track record of the Sri Lankan government, there are very significant grounds to question whether these statements were voluntary, and they raise serious concerns whether the doctors were subjected to ill-treatment during weeks of detention,” he said.

“From the time the doctors were detained, the fear was that they would be used exactly this way.”

UN estimates

The five men denied they were under pressure from the military to change their stories, but their new accounts differ dramatically from those of aid organisations and other international bodies.

“The information that the doctors have given in the press conference actually contradicts other credible sources such as the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross],” Miriam Young, director of the US counsel on Sri Lanka, an advocacy group which focuses on human rights, said.

“They now say the hospital was never shelled, when ICRC staff were in fact at the hospital at the time and can testify to that,” she told Al Jazeera from Washington.

The United Nations estimates that about 7,000 civilians died in the fighting in the north of the Indian Ocean island between January and May.

When asked about the doctors’ comments, Gordon Weiss, a UN spokesman, said: “We stand by our statements.”

The Sri Lankan military has repeatedly denied all allegations that it was responsible for the deaths of civilians.

It was impossible to get a clear picture of events in the area as the military pressed forward against the separatists as journalists and aid organisations were barred from entering. – Al Jazeera

At least 16 students are among 25 people killed by a roadside bomb in Logar province to the south of Kabul, the Afghan capital, officials said.

The blast happened on Thursday as a convoy of police were patrolling the district of Mohammad Agha.

Four police officers were among the dead.

A lorry laden with explosives had overturned the previous night and was reportedly detonated by a remote control as policemen arrived to inspect the wreckage.

The children, who were all teenagers on their way to school, were also caught in the blast.

Abdul Hameed Hamid, a district governor, said it was difficult to establish an exact death toll as many of the bodies were torn to pieces.

He said that some people were also wounded by the explosion.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Afghanistan, said the provincial authorities expected the death toll to rise.

“Logar is still a very dangerous place, it’s approximately 25km south of Kabul, and we know that the Taliban does have strongholds there as well as other groups like Hezb il-Islami,” said said.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

Attacks, mostly blamed on the Taliban, have increased across Afghanistan since US marines launched a major offensive last week in the southern Helmand province to drive out the fighters.

The Taliban has vowed to resist the offensive and hit back. – Al Jazeera

Banks of anti-riot police tried to drive a wedge into a crowd of about 1,000 Han Chinese protesters on Wednesday in Urumqi after 156 people were killed at the weekend in the region’s worst ethnic violence for decades.

Urumqi, capital of the far-flung northwestern region of Xinjiang, imposed an overnight curfew after thousands of Han stormed through its streets demanding redress and sometimes extracting bloody vengeance on Uighurs for Sunday’s violence.

There were scuffles in the volatile crowd on Wednesday as police and security forces seized apparent ringleaders, prompting cries of “release them, release them”.

President Hu Jintao abandoned plans to attend a G8 summit in Italy, returning home to monitor developments in energy-rich Xinjiang, where 1,080 people have been wounded and 1,434 arrested since Sunday.

Financial markets again appeared unaffected and life was returning to the streets of Uighur neighborhoods. But residents said night-time arrests were continuing and they were quietly preparing to defend against further Han attacks.

Urumqi airport was crowded with people anxious to leave. “We fear Xinjiang is not safe any more,” said one passenger who refused to be identified.

The city was on edge. In one downtown street, two young boys were surrounded by an angry mob, with dozens trying to pull them down and grabbing at their hair.

Volatile and swelling Han crowds protested against security forces seizing young Han men.

“Why are you catching Han Chinese? They are only trying to protect us,” said one woman in the crowd, bickering with police.

Rumors swirled. A group of Uighur men said they were convinced two locals died in Tuesday’s confrontations and that there were many more deaths across the city.

A man in his 50s, who gave name as Mohammed Ali, said he had heard from neighbors and friends that two men had died and two had been seriously wounded.

“Now we are scared to go anywhere,” he said. “Doing even simple things becomes frightening.”

“BLOOD FOR BLOOD INCOMPATIBLE WITH RULE OF LAW”

Police say Sunday’s clashes were triggered by a brawl between Uighurs and Han at a factory in south China prompted by a rumor Uighurs had raped two women. Police have detained 15 people in connection with the factory brawl, including two suspected of spreading rumours on the Internet.

“If a wrong is avenged with another wrong, there would be no end to it,” the state-owned English-language China Daily said in an editorial.

“Blood for blood is incompatible with the rule of law and will only lead to a vicious cycle of harm and revenge.”

Internet access in the city was blocked on Wednesday except in the business center of one hotel for foreign reporters.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China. It is strategically located at the borders of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China’s largest natural gas-producing region.

Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi. There were attacks in the region before and during last year’s Summer Olympics in Beijing.

But controlling the anger on both sides of the ethnic divide will now make controlling Xinjiang, with its gas reserves and trade and energy ties to central Asia, all the more testing for the ruling Communist Party.

Russia put its support firmly behind China, saying the violence was a purely internal affair.

Groups of Han gathered around reporters in Urumqi to talk about how angry they were and dragged away a Uighur woman who also approached. It was not clear what happened to her.

“We want these terrorists punished. Our hearts are still filled with anger,” said one of the Han Chinese men.

Li Yufang, a Han who owns a clothes store, said he was outraged by what had happened over the weekend and wanted to protest again, although he admitted it was unlikely amid the heavy presence of troops.

“Uighurs are spoiled like pandas. When they steal, rob, rape or kill, they can get away with it. If we Han did the same thing, we’d be executed,” he said.

The government has blamed Sunday’s killings on exiled Uighurs seeking independence for their homeland, especially Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman and activist now living in exile in the United States.

“This was a massive conspiracy by hostile forces at home and abroad, and their goal was precisely to sabotage ethnic unity and provoke ethnic antagonism,” the Communist Party boss of Xinjiang, Wang Lequan, said in a speech.

Kadeer, writing in the Asian Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, condemned the violence on both sides and again denied being the cause of the unrest.

“Years of Chinese repression of Uighurs topped by a confirmation that Chinese officials have no interest in observing the rule of law when Uighurs are concerned is the cause of the current Uighur discontent,” she wrote.

Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely Muslim and share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia, make up almost half of Xinjiang’s 20 million people.

The population of Urumqi, which lies around 3,300 km (2,000 miles) west of Beijing, is mostly Han. – Reuters