Industrial explosion kills five

13 July 2011 Last updated at 22:22 GMT Five men have been killed and a sixth has been taken to hospital in Nottingham Five men have died and one man has been seriously injured in an explosion at a small unit on a Lincolnshire industrial estate.

Police, fire and ambulance crews were called to the Broadfield Lane Industrial Estate at about 1900 BST on Wednesday.

A Lincolnshire Police spokeswoman said she believed the explosion had been very quick and the men died instantly.

The sixth man has been taken to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham.

Unconfirmed reports from local residents said they believed the men may have been migrant workers brewing illegal alcohol in the industrial unit.

Nerys McGarry from Lincolnshire Police said officers were at the scene and would remain at the unit overnight to carry out a forensic examination of the site.

Arm 'ablaze'

She said it was not yet clear what had caused the blast.

Ms McGarry said she understood the explosion was a rapid blast as opposed to an "extensive fire" but could not give any further details.

The five men were killed instantly in the explosion

"We do not have any further information about the men, their ages and where they are from but we will be making inquiries throughout the night and can give a further update in the morning," she said.

BBC Radio Lincolnshire reporter Scott Dalton, who was at the scene, said residents in the area had seen thick, black smoke coming from the industrial estate.

"Locals have been telling me they didn't even hear an explosion or even a bang," he said.

Paul Featherstone, who lives nearby resident, described what he had seen. "I heard the one fire engine come down, then a few more.

"I didn't hear an explosion, I just saw the smoke. If the explosion didn't kill them, the smoke would have done because it was that bad. It was thick, black smoke coming through the roller doors," said Mr Featherstone.

He added he was told by another eyewitness that one man ran out "with his arm all ablaze". It is understood this is the man who was taken to hospital in Nottingham. He remains in a serious condition.

Boston Central Councillor Peter Bedford described the news as a "real shock".

"There is heavy industry in that industrial estate, there's a scrapyard, there's joinery works, it's a real mix."

Boston East councillor Mike Gilbert said: "I'm very anxious to find out exactly what's happened. It's a lot of people dead and a great tragedy."

Broadfield Lane Industrial Estate is made up of about 10 units, including a furniture store, a scrap yard, a tyre place and a car maintenance business. The site is surrounded by houses and is close to Boston town centre.

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Nato 'kills top Afghan militant'

30 June 2011 Last updated at 15:13 GMT Smoke billows from the Intercontinental Hotel after the Tuesday night attack Nato forces in Afghanistan say they have killed a senior militant they suspect of involvement in the attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul.

Ismail Jan died in an air strike in the eastern province of Paktia on Wednesday, the alliance said.

BBC correspondents say he is a leading commander in the Haqqani network, which is linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Nato and Afghan intelligence believe Haqqani members helped mount the hotel attack, which left 22 people dead.

The Interior Ministry says nine attackers were killed as well as 11 civilians and two police.

There has so far been no independent confirmation of Ismail Jan's death.

'Precision air strike'

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the hotel attack, but Nato said it was carried out jointly with the Haqqani network.

The group has bases in the tribal region of Waziristan in Pakistan, but focuses its attacks over the border in Afghanistan.

It has been accused of carrying out a number of high-profile gun and bomb attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.

Afghan officials also say the network has close ties to Pakistani intelligence services.

A statement from the Nato-led Isaf force said Jan was suspected of providing "material support" to the hotel attackers in Kabul.

It said he had been killed in what it called a "precision air strike" in Gardez district.

"Ismail Jan was the deputy to the senior Haqqani commander inside Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan. Jan and several Haqqani fighters were killed in the strike," the statement said.

It added that he had been tracked down after information from Afghan officials, citizens and "disenfranchised insurgents".

Ismail Jan operated in and around the Khost-Gardez pass, a rugged and heavily forested area near the Pakistan border, and was blamed for leading attacks on Nato and Afghan targets.

Securing the porous and volatile border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has presented a major challenge for security forces in both countries.

On Thursday General Aminullah Amarkhel, the border police commander for eastern Afghanistan, resigned. He said Kabul and Nato had failed to act after Pakistani rockets were fired into Afghan territory.

Last week Afghan officials accused the Pakistani army of firing hundreds of rockets over the border. Pakistan denies this but says a few stray rockets may have crossed the border as the army battled militants in the area.

The army says that in recent weeks insurgents have crossed over from Afghanistan and attacked villages in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Many of the militant groups along the frontier are closely linked.

'Lapses'

In Kabul, meanwhile, the BBC has seen photos showing at least two of the Intercontinental attackers wearing police uniforms, raising questions about whether the militants received inside help.

In other photos large amounts of rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and bullets were left behind by the dead insurgents. Investigators want to know how they got their weapons inside the hotel.

Previous attacks in Kabul and elsewhere have led intelligence officials to conclude that the Haqqani network has penetrated Afghan security at the highest level.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says several police officials are now being questioned over what many see as glaring security lapses at one of the capital's apparently most secure locations.

During the attack, special forces from New Zealand were injured when Afghan national police mistakenly fired at them.

"They were using the F-word after they came out, we apologised to them," a senior police official told our correspondent.

Afghan forces are also accused of being slow to arrive on the scene once Tuesday night's attack had started.

Nato air support had to be called in before calm was finally restored.

Correspondents say the Intercontinental, which is not part of the international hotel chain of the same name, is one of Kabul's most heavily guarded hotels.

But a security ministry official told the BBC that the militants could have exploited a loophole in security caused by renovation work.

Kabul - the scene of many attacks over recent years - has been relatively stable so far this year, although violence has increased across the country since the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan on 2 May, and the start of the Taliban's "spring offensive".

In January 2008, militants stormed the capital's most popular luxury hotel, the Serena, and killed eight people, including an American, a Norwegian and a woman from the Philippines.

Suicide car bomber kills 35 at Afghan clinic (AP)

By SOLOMON MOORE and RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Solomon Moore And Rahim Faiez, Associated Press – 2 hrs 25 mins ago

KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide car bomber blasted a small clinic Saturday in eastern Afghanistan, causing the building to collapse as mostly women and children lined up for vaccinations, maternity care and other services. At least 35 people were killed in one of the deadliest attacks against civilians this year.

Guards saw a sport utility vehicle charging toward the Akbarkhail Public Medical Center, a compound that provides health care for the mountainous area in the Azra district of Logar province. But before anyone could shoot the driver or blow out the tires, the SUV smashed through a wall and exploded, local officials said.

Wary of being blamed for civilian casualties, the Taliban denied it was behind the bombing. Violence has been on the rise since the Islamic movement launched its spring offensive and promised retaliation for the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

"This attack was not done by our fighters," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Survivors of the blast and others who heard the explosion frantically dug through the rubble with shovels and bare hands. At least 35 bodies were pulled from the debris and 53 other people were wounded, provincial public health director Dr. Mohammad Zaref Nayebkhail said.

The victims — most women and children — included patients, visitors, and medical staffers.

"They were offering important services for the people. We had very good services and lots of patients. There were only 10 beds but lots of other services in that center. It's why the casualties were so high," he said.

Nayebkhail said an Afghan army helicopter was dispatched to the area to deliver medical supplies and to ferry survivors to other hospitals. He said the clinic had recently been expanded to meet the health needs of the far-flung district's population.

The Taliban claims it does not target civilians, but the movement is fractured and Saturday's attacks shared characteristics of recent violence.

Saturday's attack was the deadliest since February, when three men shot to death 38 people at a Kabul Bank branch in Jalalabad. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the victims deserved their fates because some worked for the Western-backed Afghan government, which they perceive as illegitimate.

The Taliban also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in February in the northern province of Kunduz which killed 31 people as they waited for government identification cards.

A recent U.N. report found that May was the deadliest month for civilians since it began keeping track in 2007, and it said insurgents were to blame for 82 percent of the 368 deaths recorded.

Late Friday, another blast — this one caused by a bicycle rigged with explosives — ripped through a bazaar in the Khanabad district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 people, including a police officer, and wounding 24, according to an Interior Ministry statement.

The bombings raised concerns about the readiness of Afghans to take over their own security as the U.S. and other NATO nations begin to withdraw forces. President Barack Obama's announced Wednesday that he plans to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. NATO officials insist the Afghan government will be prepared for full sovereignty by 2014.

The French government reported, meanwhile, that a French soldier was killed after coming under fire from insurgents while on a reconnaissance mission east of Kabul.

The death brings to 47 the number of NATO service members killed in June, and to more than 200 those killed this year, slightly fewer than last year's six-month total.

As violence raged in the provinces, Kabul plunged deeper into a constitutional crisis.

Afghan lawmakers, upset over a controversial electoral investigation, passed a no-confidence resolution on Saturday against the nation's most senior judicial officials, calling for five of them to be fired two days after doing the same for the attorney general.

It was unclear if the decision would actually lead to action against the judicial officials. President Hamid Karzai was in neighboring Iran attending a security conference.

Both votes were taken to protest a special investigative tribunal that invalidated the victories of 62 lawmakers because of alleged improper voting procedures and fraud. The tribunal was requested by the attorney general, endorsed by the supreme court and approved by Karzai.

Some parliament members characterize its findings as an unconstitutional power grab by Karzai and his appointees.

Two-term parliament member Fawza Kofi, not among those named in the tribunal's report, supported the no-confidence votes.

"The tribunal didn't deal with any criminal issues, rather it just invalidated the votes of the people," she said.

She acknowledged the parliamentary vote was largely symbolic, since the body has no power to remove the judges or attorney general. Abdul Malik Kamawi, chief executive of the supreme court, said the votes were unconstitutional and would be ignored.

Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullah Nazery also dismissed the no-confidence votes as illegitimate, since some of the lawmakers had been discredited by the special tribunal. Nazery said his office will refer the tribunal's findings to the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, which will have the final word on whether to replace the lawmakers.