Roadside bombs kill 17 in Afghanistan
Kabul, July 2
Roadside bombs have killed 17 persons in southern Afghanistan, including 13 who died when an explosion ripped through the van they were travelling in this morning, the government said.

Another Royal Couple: Monaco's Prince Albert II (R) and his bride Princess Charlene leave the Royal Palace after the wedding ceremony on Saturday. — Reuters

Tripoli/Madrid, July 2
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi vowed to attack “homes, offices and families” in Europe in revenge for NATO airstrikes but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said he should quit instead of issuing threats.

In a telephone address relayed to some 100,000 supporters in Tripoli’s Green Square on Friday evening, Gaddafi urged NATO to halt its bombing campaign or risk seeing Libyan fighters descend on Europe “like a swarm of locusts or bees”.

Gaddafi forces continued to shell the rebel-held coastal town of Misrata on Saturday, a NATO official said. Libyan TV reported that NATO bombs had caused casualties in the central region of al-Jufrah, but have no further details.

Gaddafi, who along with his son and spy chief faces an international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity, has vowed to fight to the end and branded the NATO operation a colonial aggression aimed at securing Libya’s oil riches.

“Retreat, you have no chance of beating this brave people,” Gaddafi said in his address broadcast on Friday. “They can attack your homes, your offices and your families, which will become military targets just as you have transformed our offices, headquarters, houses and children into what you regards as legitimate military targets,” he said.

“If we choose, we can descend on Europe like a swarm of locusts or bees. We therefore advise you to retreat before you face catastrophe.”

Clinton on Saturday brushed off Gaddafi’s remarks and stepped up calls on him to quit. “Instead of issuing threats, Gaddafi should put the well-being and the interests of his own people first and he should step down from power and help facilitate a democratic transition,” Clinton told a news conference during a visit to NATO member Spain.

Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez, whose country was targeted by Islamist militants in simultaneous train blasts in 2004 that killed 191, said the alliance stance was unchanged. “Spain’s and the international coalition’s response is to maintain the unity and determination with which we have been working these past months,” she said.

Gaddafi’s speech came as Libyan rebels, who had advanced to within 80 km of the capital were stopped in their tracks by a barrage of rocket fire from government forces, underlining the dogged resistance of Gaddafi troops to a five-month revolt.

Coalition military officials refuse to characterise the situation on the ground as a stalemate after a 104-day bombing campaign that has strained alliance firepower and tested unity, with internal divisions over strategy surfacing.

A rebel advance from the Western Mountains to just outside the small town of Bir al-Ghanam this week had raised prospects of a breakthrough, but they have been pinned down by Gaddafi forces who on Friday attacked with Russian-made Grad rockets.

Analysts say part of NATO’s strategy is to use the attacks to hinder efforts by authorities to put down any future uprising in Tripoli. London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported that Gaddafi’s representatives had been meeting officials from France and Britain on the Tunisian island of Djerba.

Citing unnamed sources from the Gaddafi and opposition camps, the newspaper said Gaddafi was willing to step down if he was spared prosecution and allowed to live in his hometown of Sirte, northern Libya, with guarantees for his security. — Reuters

New York, July 2
In a secretly recorded phone conversation, the New York hotel maid who had accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, can be heard telling her boyfriend in a Arizona about her plan to get money from the former IMF chief.

“She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,” an official told The New York Times.

The phone conversation was translated this Wednesday from the Fulani dialect spoken in the maid’s native Guinea, the paper said.

Strauss-Kahn (62) was accused of forcing the Guinean maid (32) at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan to perform oral sex.

Yesterday, Strauss-Kahn who was released from house arrest, will be allowed to travel inside the US. He will also have his $1 million bail and $5 million bond returned. Investigators have reportedly discovered a string of lies told by the maid to a grand jury including a false story about being raped in Guinea.

The Times reported that meetings with prosecutors became tense and angry. She collapsed in tears and got down on the floor during questioning. She became unavailable to investigators from the district attorney’s office for days at a time.

While the maid has claimed that the hotel job is her only source of income, in recent weeks, investigators collected bank records showing deposits of thousands of dollars in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania to an account in her name. — PTI

Washington, July 2
Details of communication between Al-Qaida leaders derived from Osama bin Laden’s computers indicate that the terror network is facing massive financial crunch and difficulties in replacing cadres lost in combat with US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places, a media report said today.

During the six weeks of intensive study of the materials obtained from Abbottabad compound of Laden, where he was killed by special US forces on May 2, the CIA-led inter-agency team prepared some 400 intelligence reports.

The most important information gleaned from the 15 computers and 100 storage devices recovered from his compound is the information about the internal strains of the terrorist outfit and the repeated attempt of Laden to carry out attacks on the US, The Washington Post reported.

“The trove makes it clear that bin Laden’s primary goal - you can call it an obsession - was to attack the US homeland,” a senior US counter-terrorism official was quoted as saying,” he added. According to The Washington Post over the past year, the Al-Qaida leader fielded e-mails from followers lamenting the toll being taken by CIA drone “explosions” as well as the network’s financial plight.

“Laden approved the creation of a counter-intelligence unit to root out traitors, only to receive a complaint in mid-2010 from the unit’s leader that it was losing the ‘espionage war’ and couldn’t function on its paltry budget,” it said. — PTI 

Kabul, July 2
Roadside bombs have killed 17 persons in southern Afghanistan, including 13 who died when an explosion ripped through the van they were travelling in this morning, the government said.

The Ministry of Interior said four women and two children were among those who died in the van in Shamulzayi district of Zabul province. In neighbouring Kandahar province, two civilians riding a donkey were killed on Friday night when the animal stepped on a bomb in Maruf district, said Gen Abdul Raziq, police chief in Kandahar province.

When villagers came to recover the bodies, another roadside bomb went off and killed two more civilians, he said. Also in the south today, two gunmen on a motorcycle killed Wakil Mohammad Khan, a member of the local council in Nahri Sarraj district of Helmand province, the interior ministry said. — AP