Ex-special forces officer to head Afghan fight

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates (wearing suit) and U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan (seated, right), then-commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, listen Friday to Afghan governors and local officials during a visit to Forward Operating Base Airborne in the mountains of Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Gates fired McKieran on Monday.

WASHINGTON – President Obama fired the top U.S. general in Afghanistan on Monday, replacing him with a former special forces commander in a quest for a more agile, unconventional approach in a war that has gone quickly downhill.

With the Taliban resurgent, Obama’s switch from Gen. David McKiernan to Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal suggested that the new president wants major changes in addition to the additional troops he’s ordering into Afghanistan to shore up the war effort.

McKiernan, on the job for less than a year, repeatedly pressed for more forces. Although Obama has approved more than 21,000 additional troops this year, he has warned that the war will not be won by military means.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates echoed that view at a grim Pentagon news conference announcing the leadership overhaul.

“As I have said many times before, very few of these problems can be solved by military means alone,” he said. “And yet, from the military perspective, we can and must do better.”

“It’s time for new leadership and fresh eyes.”

A new team of commanders will now be charged with applying Obama’s revamped strategy for challenging an increasingly brutal and resourceful insurgency. The strategy, a work in progress, relies on the kind of special forces and counterinsurgency tactics McChrystal knows well, as well as nonmilitary approaches to confronting the Taliban. It would hinge success in the seven-year-old war to political and other conditions across the border in Pakistan.

McKiernan, named to his post by then- President George W. Bush, had expected to serve into next year but was told he was out during Gates’ visit to Afghanistan last week.

Gates said he asked for McKiernan’s resignation “with the approval of the president.” The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and McKiernan’s military boss, Gen. David Petraeus, both said they supported the switch.

The White House said the recommended change came from the Pentagon.

“The president agreed with the recommendation of the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the implementation of a new strategy in Afghanistan called for new military leadership,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

McChrystal is a former special forces chief credited with nabbing one of the most-wanted fugitives in Iraq. Taking a newly created No. 2 slot under his command will be Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, a veteran of the Afghanistan fight who has been Gates’ military shadow, the top uniformed aide who travels with him everywhere.

By year’s end, the United States will have more than 68,000 troops in the sprawling country, about double the total at the end of Bush’s presidency but far fewer than the 130,000 in Iraq.

McKiernan and other U.S. commanders have said resources they need in Afghanistan are tied up in Iraq.

Although Obama had pledged to add forces in Afghanistan while shutting down the Iraq war, his new administration has sought firmer control over the pace and scope of any new deployments. Gates and Mullen have both warned Obama that a very large influx of U.S. troops would be self-defeating.

Asked if McKiernan’s resignation would end his military career, Gates said, “Probably.” But he praised the general’s long service, and when pressed to name anything McKiernan had failed to do, Gates demurred.

“Nothing went wrong, and there was nothing specific,” he said.

Gates, too, was appointed to his position by Bush. He noted that the Afghan campaign has long lacked people and money in favor of the Bush administration’s focus since 2003 on the Iraq war.

“But I believe, resources or no, that our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders,” he said. “Today we have a new policy set by our new president. We have a new strategy, a new mission and a new ambassador. I believe that new military leadership also is needed.”

McKiernan issued a short statement in Kabul.

“All of us, in any future capacity, must remain committed to the great people of Afghanistan,” McKiernan said. “They deserve security, government that meets their expectations, and a better future than the last 30 years of conflict have witnessed.”

In June 2006 Bush congratulated McChrystal for his role in the operation that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. As head of the Special Operations Command, McChrystal’s forces included the Army’s clandestine counterterrorism unit, the Delta Force.

He drew criticism for his role in the military’s handling of the friendly fire shooting of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a former NFL star, in Afghanistan.

An investigation at the time found that McChrystal was “accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions” contained in papers recommending that Tillman get a Silver Star award.

McChrystal acknowledged he had suspected several days before approving the Silver Star citation that Tillman might have died by fratricide, rather than enemy fire. He sent a memo to military leaders warning them of that, even as they were approving Tillman’s Silver Star. Still, he told investigators he believed Tillman deserved the award.

McChrystal

———

McCHRYSTAL BIO

NAME: Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal

EXPERIENCE : Director of The Joint Staff, August 2008-present; Commander, Joint Special Operations Command and commander, Joint Special Operations Command Forward, 2006-2008; commanding general, Joint Special Operations Command, 2003-06; vice director for operations, J-3 The Joint Staff, 2002-03; chief of staff, XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, 2001-02; assistant division commander for operations, 82d Airborne Division; commander, 75th Ranger Regiment, 1997-99.

EDUCATION: B.S., U.S. Military Academy; M.A. in national security and strategic studies, U.S. Naval War College; M.S. in international relations, Salve Regina University.

A new poll from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants surveyed believe that torture is often or sometimes justified. The poll also found that 44 percent of all regular churchgoers – regardless of race or denomination – believe that torture is often or sometimes justified.

David Gushee, a Baptist ethicist at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., said the poll is a sign of moral failure. He believes the war on terror has made Christians ignore the Bible.

Jesus, he said, told his followers to love their enemies. That makes torture unacceptable.

“It’s almost like we’ve got post-traumatic moral syndrome,” Gushee said. “We are giving the terrorists too much power if we say that they are so scary, we have to set aside 200 years of U.S. law to defeat them.”

For years, Gushee and other leaders of the National Campaign Against Torture have tried to change the United States policy on torture and interrogation. They were pleased with President Barack Obama’s executive order banning waterboarding and other interrogation techniques.

But that’s not enough, said Linda Gustitus, president of the campaign. She wants churchgoers and other citizens to reject torture completely.

“We cannot be confident that the United States will never use torture again unless the American people, including people of faith, believe it is wrong to do so – under all circumstances,” Gustitus said.

Americans have traditionally taken that approach. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington warned his soldiers not to mistreat prisoners.

“Treat them with humanity,” he wrote, “and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands.”

Gushee said that aside from not being Christian-like, torture is ineffective.

“People being tortured are in pain and will lie to stop the torture,” he said.

In most cases, he said, torture is used to intimidate or punish prisoners, not gain useful information.

That should concern Christians in the United States, he said, because many of their fellow believers are tortured for their faith around the world. And totalitarian governments use torture to wipe out any political dissent.

“Torture means to crush a human body and a human spirit,” he said.

Politics skew results?

So, why do so many evangelicals support torture?

Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Conventions, said one reason is theological. Conservative Christians tend to have a pessimistic view of human nature. They are willing to justify torture if it can save lives.

“They believe in the innate sinfulness of human beings,” he said. “So they believe that sometimes you have to choose between doing a greater evil and a lesser evil.”

Political affiliation also plays a role. Pew researchers found that 64 percent of Republicans said that torture is often or sometimes justified, as opposed to 36 percent of Democrats.

Since evangelicals and regular churchgoers are more likely to be Republicans, that may skew the results.

BAGHDAD – A U.S. Army sergeant who was due to leave Iraq soon after multiple tours has been charged with murder and aggravated assault in the fatal shooting of five fellow soldiers at a U.S. military counseling clinic in Baghdad, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

Sgt. John M. Russell of the 54th Engineering Battalion based in Bamberg, Germany was charged with five counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in Monday’s shooting, Maj. Gen. David Perkins told reporters.

It was the deadliest case of soldier-on-soldier violence since the Iraq war began in 2003 and has drawn attention to the issue of combat stress and frequent deployments to battle zones.

Russell was taken into custody by military police outside the clinic following the shooting at Camp Liberty, Perkins said.

Perkins said two of the dead were officers — doctors from the Army and Navy — and the others were enlisted personnel seeking treatment at the clinic. He did not identify the victims by name.

He said a probe has also begun into whether the Army has enough mental health facilities in Iraq to care for stress cases.

The U.S. military is coping with a growing number of stress cases among soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan — many of whom are on their third or fourth combat tours. Some studies suggest that about 15 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq suffer from some sort of emotional problems.

Perkins gave few details of the shooting since the investigation is ongoing and added that there were conflicting accounts of what happened.

He said the alleged assailant had been referred to the clinic by his superiors, presumably because of concern over his mental state. Perkins said Russell was “probably” on his third tour of Iraq but was due to leave soon.

Perkins said the assailant’s weapon had been taken away, but somehow he got a new weapon, entered the clinic and opened fire.

In Washington, a Pentagon official said the alleged assailant had been escorted to the clinic, but once inside got into an argument with the staff and was asked to leave. After he and his escort drove away, Russell allegedly took control of the escort’s weapon and returned to the clinic, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

President Barack Obama, who visited an adjacent base last month, said in a statement that he was “shocked and deeply saddened” by the report.

At the Pentagon, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the shooting occurred “in a place where individuals were seeking help.”

“It does speak to me about the need for us to redouble our efforts in terms of dealing with the stress,” Mullen said.

Violence has dropped sharply in Iraq since the high point in 2007, but attacks continue, especially in the north.

Also Tuesday, a suicide bomber rammed his car into an Iraqi police truck in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing five policemen and a civilian.

Kirkuk is the center of Iraq’s oil production in the north and is contested between its Kurdish, Turkomen and Arab populations.

TEHRAN, Iran – American journalist Roxana Saberi said Tuesday she is very happy to be free and reunited with her parents and thanked those who helped win her release after four months in an Iranian prison, as new details emerged of her conviction on charges of spying for the United States.

One of Saberi’s lawyers said she was originally convicted in part because she had visited Israel and because she kept a confidential Iranian government document about the U.S. war in Iraq, which she obtained while working as a freelance Web translator for a powerful body connected to Iran’s ruling clerics.

Speaking to reporters in Tehran for the first time since her release Monday, a smiling Saberi said she did not have any specific plans but wanted to spend time with her family. She looked thin but energetic, dressed in a bright blue headscarf, black pants and a black dress.

“I am very happy that I have been released and reunited with my father and mother. I am very grateful to all the people who knew me or didn’t know me and helped for my release,” she said in brief remarks outside her home in north Tehran. “I don’t have any specific plans for the time being. I want to stay with my parents. ”

Her Iranian-born father Reza Saberi told reporters the family was making plans to return home to the United States but probably would not be ready to leave on Tuesday or Wednesday.

“She has lost a lot of weight,” he said, adding that now “she is eating well. She is recovering.”

He said his daughter “was not tortured at all” while in custody but that she made incriminating statements about herself under pressure. He said his daughter initially pleaded guilty to the charges under pressure but retracted her statements later and the appeals court accepted that. He did not elaborate on the sort of pressure.

The younger Saberi was freed after an appeals court reduced her original eight-year prison sentence to a two-year suspended sentence.

The 32-year-old journalist, who has dual Iranian and American citizenship, was convicted of spying for the United States in mid-April in a swift, secret trial before a security court that her father said lasted only 15 minutes.

One of Saberi’s lawyers, Saleh Nikbakht, revealed new details of the case on Tuesday. He said Saberi had copied and kept a “confidential document” about the U.S. war in Iraq that was issued by a research center connected to the Iranian president’s office, and that this was used against her in her original conviction.

Saberi obtained the document while she was working as a freelance translator for the Expediency Council, a powerful body in Iran’s ruling clerical hierarchy, Nikbakht said. The council’s role is to mediate between the legislature, presidency and ruling clerics over constitutional disputes. The lawyer said Saberi was occasionally working as translator for council’s Web site two years ago.

During her trial, prosecutors also cited a trip to Israel that Saberi made in 2006 as evidence against her, the lawyer said. The Iranian government bars its citizens from visiting Israel.

In her appeal court session on Sunday, Saberi admitted to the court that she possessed the document, saying she copied it out of “curiosity,” but she said she didn’t share it with American officials, Nikbakht said. She apologized for doing so, and the court reduced the charge against her from espionage to possessing confidential documents.

She also acknowledged visiting Israel but said her activities there were not directed against Iran, he said.

Her original conviction was also on charges of working with a “hostile country” referring to the United States. But Nikbakht said the appeals court dropped that charge, ruling that the U.S. is not a hostile country because it and Iran are not at war.

Washington had called the espionage charges against Saberi “baseless” and repeatedly demanded her release. The case was an irritant in U.S.-Iran relations at a time when President Barack Obama was offering to restart a dialogue with Tehran after decades of shunning the country.

But Saberi’s release cleared one obstacle to closer contacts. It could also help hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win some domestic political points a month before he faces a re-election challenge from reformers who seek to ease Iran’s bitter rivalry with the United States.

Saberi, who was crowned the 1997 Miss North Dakota, moved to Iran six years ago and had worked as a freelance journalist for several organizations, including NPR and the British Broadcasting Corp. She was arrested in late January.

Associated Press Writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.

Pakistan says 400 killed; thousands of refugees flee valley

MINGORA, Pakistan – Tens of thousands of civilians, many on foot or donkey-led carts, took advantage of a lifted curfew to flee Pakistan’s embattled Swat Valley on Sunday, while the army said it had killed 400 to 500 militants in its battle against the Taliban.

The hemorrhaging of residents from the scenic valley that once attracted many tourists threatened to greatly exacerbate an existing internal refugee crisis for a nuclear-armed nation already facing economic, political and other woes.

The army offensive has garnered praise from the U.S., which wants Pakistan to root out havens on its soil where Taliban militants can plan attacks on American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan. In an interview aired Sunday, Pakistan’s president urged international support for the fight and insisted the army had enough troops in the northwest to handle the threat.

As they left Swat’s main town of Mingora, some residents cursed the situation and condemned the Taliban, while others blamed Pakistani leaders for bowing to the West. “Show our picture to your master America and get money from him,” some taunted.

The desperate Swat residents were trying to leave any way they could – on motorbikes, animal-pulled carts, rickshaws or foot. A ban on civilian vehicles entering the valley complicated the exodus for those without cars. Some chided an Associated Press reporter for slowing them down by asking questions.

“We are going out only with our clothes and a few things to eat on the long journey,” said Rehmat Alam, a 40-year-old medical technician walking out of Mingora with 18 other relatives. “We just got out by relying on God.”

Fighter jets and helicopter gunships have pounded Swat and surrounding districts over the past few days after Taliban fighters in the valley moved out and tried to impose their reign in other areas, including a stretch just 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

The army’s nine-hour suspension of the curfew Sunday could signal a more intense operation now that more civilians have left. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said 400 to 500 militants had been killed since the operation’s launch last week.

WASHINGTON – A U.S. soldier opened fire at a counseling center on a U.S. base Monday, killing five fellow soldiers before being taken into custody, the U.S. command and Pentagon officials said.

The shooting occurred at Camp Liberty, a sprawling U.S. base on the western edge of Baghdad near the city’s international airport and adjacent to another facility where President Barack Obama visited last month.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called the shooting a “terrible tragedy” and said Obama planned to meet with Defense Secretary Gates later in the day to discuss the matter. Gibbs said the president’s heart goes out to the victims’ families and wants to know what happened.

A brief U.S. statement said the soldier “suspected of being involved with the shooting” was in custody but gave no further details. A senior military official in Washington said three others were wounded, but the U.S. military in Baghdad said nobody else was hurt.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said the shooting happened at a stress clinic, where troops can go for help with the stresses of combat or personal issues. It was unclear whether those killed were workers at the clinic or were there for counseling. No details were released about the gunman or what might have provoked the shooting.

“Anytime we lose one of our own, it affects us all,” U.S. military spokesman Col. John Robinson said in Baghdad. “Our hearts go out to the families and friends of all the service members involved in this terrible tragedy.”

Separately, the military announced Monday that a U.S. soldier was also killed a day earlier when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in Basra province of southern Baghdad.

The death toll from the Monday shooting was the highest for U.S. personnel in a single attack since April 10, when a suicide truck driver killed five American soldiers with a blast near a police headquarters in Mosul.

Attacks on officers and sergeants, known as fraggings, were not uncommon during the Vietnam war as morale in the ranks sank. However, such attacks are believed to be rare in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2005, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar was sentenced to death for killing two officers in Kuwait just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In June 2005, an Army captain and lieutenant were killed when an anti-personnel mine detonated in the window of their room at the U.S. base in Tikrit. National Guard Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez was acquitted in the blast.

Additionally, there have been several incidents recently when gunmen dressed as Iraqi soldiers have opened fire on American troops, including an attack in the northern city of Mosul on May 2 when two soldiers and the gunman were killed.

Also Monday, a senior Iraqi traffic officer was assassinated on his way to work in Baghdad. It was the second attack on a high-ranking traffic police officer in the capital in as many days.

A car cut off Brig. Gen. Abdul-Hussein al-Kadhoumi as he drove through a central square in the capital and a second vehicle pulled up alongside and riddled him with bullets, police said, citing witnesses. Al-Kadhoumi was director of operations for the traffic authority.

The gunmen were armed with pistols equipped with silencers, the police added on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Incidents involving gunmen armed with sophisticated weapons, including silencers, have been on the rise since a string of high-profile robberies in April.

KABUL – The U.S. military accused militants in Afghanistan on Monday of using white phosphorus munitions in attacks on American forces and in civilian areas, saying it has documented at least 44 incidents of insurgents using or storing the weapons. A spokeswoman labeled the attacks “reprehensible.”

White phosphorus is a spontaneously flammable material that leaves severe chemical burns on flesh. Using white phosphorus to illuminate a target or create smoke is considered legitimate under international law, but rights groups say its use over populated areas can indiscriminately burn civilians and constitutes a war crime.

The U.S. military, in documents supplied to The Associated Press, said there had been at least seven instances of militants using white phosphorus in improvised explosive attacks since spring 2007, including attacks in civilian areas.

The military documents showed 12 attacks where militants used white phosphorus in mortar or rocket attacks, the majority of which came the last two years.

The most recent attack came last Thursday, when a NATO outpost in Logar was hit with two rounds of indirect white phosphorus fire, the documents said. Most troops in Logar, which lies south of Kabul, are American.

Afghan authorities have also said Taliban fighters may have used a burning agent — possibly white phosphorus — in a major U.S.-Taliban battle on May 4, after doctors discovered unusual burns among the dead and wounded .

A U.S. spokeswoman, Maj. Jenny Willis, said the use of white phosphorus as a weapon could cause “unnecessary suffering” as defined in the laws of warfare.

“This pattern of irresponsible and indiscriminate use of white phosphorus by insurgents is reprehensible and should be noted by the international human rights community,” she said.

Willis said the U.S. military and NATO have been able to document 44 cases of white phosphorus use by insurgents — either attacks or in weapons caches — but that there may be more. Thirty-eight of those cases occurred in eastern Afghanistan, the region where the majority of American troops are stationed. Six cases came from other parts of the country.

White phosphorus is used to mark targets, create smoke screens or as a weapon, and can be delivered by shells, flares or hand grenades. Human rights groups denounce its use as a weapon for the severe burns it causes, though it is not banned by any treaty to which the United States is a signatory.

The U.S. military used white phosphorus in the battle of Fallujah in Iraq in November 2004. Israel’s military used it in January against Hamas targets in Gaza.

Afghan officials on Sunday said they were investigating the possibility that white phosphorus was used in a U.S.-Taliban battle in Farah province last week that President Hamid Karzai said killed up to 130 civilians.

Nader Nadery, an official with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said Monday that doctors are treating 16 patients with severe burns suffered in the May 4 battle. The commission is investigating the possible use of white phosphorus or another incendiary chemical against villagers during the battle.

Nadery said Farah’s governor told the group’s researchers that many of those killed in the battle also had severe burns. The governor confirmed that Taliban fighters may attacked the villagers with a flammable material, though not necessarily white phosphorus, Nadery said.

Children line up to receive hot tea at a refugee camp near Mardan, Pakistan, Friday.<a href="http://10.4.149.24/archives/apphoto/search/?search%5Bform%5D%5Bfulltext%5D=Greg+Baker+within+BYLINE"/>

MARDAN, Pakistan – Pakistan’s army vowed Friday to eliminate militants from a northwestern valley but warned that its under-equipped troops face thousands of Taliban extremists who have seized towns, planted bombs, and coerced children to be suicide bombers.

As air force jets roared overhead and gunbattles raged, terrified civilians from the Swat Valley and neighboring districts accelerated their exodus, with United Nations and Pakistani officials predicting 1 million refugees will soon burden the turbulent Afghan border region.

“The army is now engaged in a full-scale operation to eliminate the militants, miscreants and anti-state elements from Swat,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, chief army spokesman.

Pakistan’s army is fighting to wrest Swat and two neighboring districts from militants who dominate the adjoining tribal belt along the Afghan frontier.

The army announced its offensive after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government would wipe out groups trying to “take Pakistan hostage at gunpoint.”

Meanwhile, the stream of civilians seeking safety appeared to have intensified, leaving Pakistan facing a humanitarian emergency.

On Friday, the U.N. refugee agency said provincial officials had told them 500,000 had fled, were on the move, or were trying to flee. About a half-million have already been made homeless elsewhere in the border region since August 2008, when the army launched its last major anti-Taliban operation in the Bajur border region.

Some in Mingora, Swat’s main town, have accused the Taliban of not allowing them to leave, perhaps because they want to use them as human shields. Others came under attack even as they fled.

KABUL – The U.S. military said Friday reports that as many as 147 civilians died in fighting involving American forces and the Taliban were “extremely over-exaggerated” and investigators were still analyzing the data collected at the site.

In the south, meanwhile, four NATO soldiers and 21 civilians died in a string of insurgent attacks, and an unmanned U.S. drone crashed in central Ghazni province.

Officials said preliminary findings of the joint U.S.-Afghan investigation into the deaths in the villages of Ganjabad and Gerani in the western Farah province could be released as early as Friday, but they have yet to schedule an announcement.

Reports of the large number of civilian deaths come at an awkward time for the Obama administration, as the U.S. steps up its military campaign here while emphasizing the importance of nonmilitary efforts to stabilize the country.

A local official said that he collected from residents the names of 147 people killed during fighting on Monday night and Tuesday. If true, it would be the deadliest case of civilian casualties in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban regime.

But the U.S. military described that toll from the fighting as over the top.

“The investigators and the folks on the ground think that those numbers are extremely over-exaggerated,” U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said. “We are definitely nowhere near those estimates.”

Mathias said she could not yet provide estimates of how many people were killed as the team has yet to produce its findings.

Afghan residents say the destruction was from aerial bombing. U.S. officials have suggested that at least some of the deaths were caused by insurgents, whom the military accuses of using civilians as human shields when fighting with its forces.

In a video obtained Friday by Associated Press Television News, villagers are seen wrapping the mangled bodies of some of the victims in blankets and cloths and lining them up on the dusty ground.

In one shot, two children are lifted from a blanket with another adult already in it. The children’s faces are blackened, and parts of their tunics are soaked in what appears to be coagulated blood.

Their limp bodies are then put on the ground, wrapped in another cloth and put next to the other bodies. It was not clear how many bodies were in the room where the video was shot.

The man who shot the video said many of the bodies he filmed in the village of Gerani on Tuesday were in pieces. He spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from security agencies.

It was not possible to independently verify the authenticity of the video.

Investigators on Thursday visited the scene of the violence, where sobbing relatives showed them graves and the demolished buildings where they said the victims had sheltered.

“The joint investigators are back and they are all discussing what they found,” Mathias said. “We are still corroborating.”

President Barack Obama expressed sympathy over the loss of life in a White House meeting Wednesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who contends that such killings undermine support for the fight against resurgent Taliban militants.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whose two-day visit in Afghanistan was overshadowed by the case, offered a new expression of U.S. regret for the deaths but stopped short of taking blame.

“We regret any, even one, innocent civilian casualty and will make whatever amends are necessary,” Gates said Thursday during a visit to the war zone. “We have expressed regret regardless of how this occurred.”

Abdul Basir Khan, a member of Farah’s provincial council who said he helped the joint delegation from Kabul with their examination Thursday, said he collected names of 147 dead — 55 at one site and 92 at another. Khan said he gave his tally to the Kabul team.

He said villagers told investigators that many of the dead were buried in mass graves of 20 or so people. Investigators did not exhume the bodies, according to Khan.

“They were pointing to graves and saying, ‘This is my son, this is my daughter,”‘ Khan said.

Villagers said they gathered children, women and elderly men in several compounds near the village of Gerani to keep them away from the fighting, but that the compounds were hit by airstrikes. The International Committee of the Red Cross has also said that women and children were among dozens of dead people its teams saw in two villages.

But what happened remained a matter of dispute.

Three U.S. defense officials, speaking anonymously, said Thursday that it is possible the investigators would find a mix of causes for the deaths — that some were caused by the firefight between the Americans and the Taliban, some by the U.S. airstrike and some deliberately killed by Taliban fighters hoping U.S. bombings would be blamed.

In southern Afghanistan, meanwhile, NATO said four of its soldiers died in a series of clashes and bombings.

Two of the alliance’s soldiers died in a suicide attack in the southern Helmand province Thursday, NATO said in a statement. The blast also killed 21 civilians and wounded 23 others, said Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand’s governor.

Initially, only 12 people were reported killed in the attack.

Separately, a NATO soldier was killed in a roadside bomb, also in southern Afghanistan, where another British soldier died from a gunshot wound Thursday.

Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency. Obama has ordered thousands of new troops to join the fight there and reverse the Taliban gains.

On Friday, a U.S. Air Force Predator drone went down in central Ghazni province’s Qarabagh district, Mathias said. She ruled out insurgent activity in the area of the crash.

However, Zabiullah Mujaheed, a Taliban spokesman, said they had shot the drone down. It was impossible to verify the claim.

Obama able to get commitments to fight militants

Pakistani soldiers are seen on their way to Pakistan's troubled valley of Swat where government security forces are fighting with Taliban militants, in Mardan near Peshawar, Pakistan on Wednesday.

TAKHT BAI, Pakistan – Pakistan launched air and ground attacks against up to 7,000 Taliban entrenched militants Wednesday, killing dozens holed up at emerald mines and on forested hillsides following urgent U.S. demands to step up the fight against the insurgents.

President Obama declared he got the commitments he wanted Wednesday from the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan to more aggressively fight Taliban and al-Qaida militants who are gaining power and sowing violence in their countries.

“I’m pleased that these two men, elected leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, fully appreciate the seriousness of the threats that we face and have reaffirmed their commitment to confronting it,” Obama said at the White House.

With militants fighting back and weary refugees lining up at camps, the operation will be a test of whether the army has the will, capability and political support to defeat an enemy that had three months under a now-shattered peace deal to rest and regroup.

“It is an all-out war there. Rockets are landing everywhere,” said Laiq Zada, 33, who fled the Swat Valley and is living in a government-run tent camp out of the danger zone.

Eight years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the area remains a haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters blamed for spiraling violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Uprooting the insurgents from the valley will mean unpopular civilian casualties. But there have been signs recently of a shift in the national mood against the Taliban after it got most of the blame for the collapsed peace process in Swat.

Wednesday’s clashes followed the collapse of a three-month-old truce in Swat that saw the government impose Islamic law.

It was widely criticized in the West as a surrender to the militants.

Sustained fighting broke out Tuesday, triggering a mass exodus from Mingora, the main town in the valley. Up to 40,000 people have fled the region, according to officials, who have warned that 500,000 could leave.

The military said about 35 militants positioned near emerald mines and in hillside bases above the town were killed – the most reported casualties there since fighting resumed. It reported another 50 enemy fighters killed in Buner in artillery strikes and clashes.

President Barack Obama speaks to reporters after his meeting with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai (left) and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday in the White House.

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korean officials have detected “brisk” activity at a North Korean nuclear test site, a news report said Thursday, days after the communist country threatened to conduct nuclear and missile tests.

Last week, the North said it would carry out a second nuclear test and test-launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, unless the U.N. Security Council apologizes for criticizing the country’s April 5 rocket launch.

South Korea’s mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Thursday that the South’s authorities have continuously detected “brisk” activities of personnel and vehicle movements at the North’s nuclear site in the northeastern county of Kilju, where the North conducted its first-ever nuclear test in 2006.

The paper quoted an unnamed South Korean government source as saying that the North is believed to be preparing to conduct a nuclear test soon. The paper didn’t say how South Korea obtained the intelligence.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the National Intelligence Service — the country’s main spy agency — said they cannot confirm the report.

The newspaper also said North Korea is speeding up construction of a new west coast missile test site by recently deploying more workers and equipment there. The paper said the South Korean military believes the North may implement its threatened long-range missile tests at the new site.

The paper quoted the source as saying the North is expected to advance the construction of the new launch site by several months, initially set for the end of this year.

In November, South Korea’s defense minister told parliament that construction of the North’s new missile site began eight years ago and is about 80 percent complete. South Korean officials have said the new site appears designed to launch larger missiles or satellite projectiles than the North’s present east coast Musudan-ni site.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has spiked since the North pressed ahead with its rocket test in defiance of international warnings.

North Korea claims it put a satellite into space, but the U.S. and other countries say nothing entered orbit and the launch was actually a long-range missile test, which the North is banned from carrying out under a 2006 U.N. resolution.

On Thursday, Pyongyang’s space agency renewed its claim that the launch was successful, saying the satellite transmitted data and played patriotic odes to leader Kim Jong Il and his father, the country’s founder.

The North “made a giant stride forward in the activities for the development of outer space for peaceful purposes,” the agency said in a statement issued to the one month anniversary of the launch, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

The U.N. Security Council denounced the launch last month and imposed sanctions on North Korean companies, prompting Pyongyang to boycott six-nation disarmament talks on its nuclear programs and threaten to conduct nuclear and missile tests.

In Beijing, meanwhile, American nuclear negotiators were hoping to devise a strategy for reviving the stalled talks. Special envoy Stephen Bosworth and Ambassador Sung Kim arrived in Beijing on the first stop of a regional tour.

Addressing reporters at his hotel, Bosworth said he had “very good meetings” Thursday afternoon with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, China’s top North Korean envoy. The men discussed the status of talks and the best way to move forward, Bosworth said.

“The United States reiterates its desire to engage both multilaterally and unilaterally with North Korea, and we believe very strongly that the solution to the tensions and problems of the area now lies in dialogue and negotiation,” Bosworth said.

Restarting the talks poses a complex challenge for President Barack Obama’s new administration and has taken on new urgency since the North said it was restarting its atomic program.

The U.S. State Department said its two envoys will travel to Seoul on Friday before flying to Tokyo and Moscow next week — a comprehensive tour of all the countries involved in the negotiations. The diplomats have no plans to travel to North Korea.

Associated Press writer Christopher Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.

MINGORA, Pakistan – Taliban militants and security forces battled for control of a northwestern Pakistani town Wednesday as residents hunkered down in their homes ahead of an expected major offensive.

Thousands of men, women and children have fled Mingora and surrounding districts, the first wave of a refugee exodus the government fears could reach 500,000.

The collapse of a 3-month-old truce in the Swat Valley with the Taliban means Pakistan will have to evict the insurgents by force, testing the ability of its stretched military and the resolve of civilian leaders who until recently were insisting the insurgents could be partners in peace.

An Associated Press reporter in Mingora said gun and mortar fire started Tuesday and continued through the night into Wednesday morning.

Dawn News reported that helicopter gunships were attacking militant positions in the town and that more troops had been deployed there.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas declined to say whether the events heralded the start of major operations, saying only that “all the contingency plans are worked out” for carrying one out.

The developments brought Islamabad’s faltering campaign against militancy into sharp focus as President Asif Ali Zardari was preparing for talks Wednesday in Washington with President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on how best to counter an increasingly overlapping spectrum of extremist groups behind surging violence in the neighboring countries.

The Obama administration hopes to build a strong and lasting regional alliance, linking success in Afghanistan with security in Pakistan. Toward that end, the administration is encouraging Pakistan to confront — not make peace with — the Taliban and other militants.

“We need to put the most heavy possible pressure on our friends in Pakistan to join us in the fight against the Taliban and its allies,” Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a congressional committee Tuesday. “We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s support and involvement.”

In an interview with CNN, Zardari defended his country’s ability to fight the militants within its borders. “It doesn’t work like that. They can’t take over,” he said. “How can they take over?”

Fearing that war could consume the region, thousands fled the main Swat town of Mingora on Tuesday. Refugees clambered onto the roofs of buses after seats and floors filled up. Children and adults alike carried belongings on their heads and backs.

“I do not have any destination. I only have an aim — to escape from here,” said Afzal Khan, 65, who was waiting for a bus with his wife and nine children. “It is like doomsday here. It is like hell.”

Shafi Ullah, a student, said the whole town was fleeing.

“Can you hear the explosions? Can you hear the gunshots?” he said, pointing to a part of town where fighting was continuing.

Pakistan agreed to a truce in the valley and surrounding districts in February after two years of fighting with militants who had beheaded political opponents and burned scores of girls schools in their campaign to implement a harsh brand of Islam modeled on their counterparts in Afghanistan.

As part of the agreement, the government imposed Islamic law last month in the hope that insurgents would lay down their arms — something they did not do.

Last week, the Taliban moved from their stronghold in the valley into Buner, a district just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital. That caused alarm at home and abroad.

The army responded with an offensive it says has killed more than 100 militants and was “progressing smoothly” Tuesday, according to a brief statement.

U.S. goal: lasting regional alliance with Afghan, Pakistan

Local residents of Mingora, capital of the troubled valley of Swat, are seen at a bus terminal as they leave the city Tuesday. Turbaned Taliban militants seized government buildings, laid mines and fought security forces in the valley, as fear of a major operation led thousands to pack their belongings on their heads and backs, cram aboard buses and flee the northwestern region. Taliban militants patrolled the streets and residents were urged to flee as a peace deal criticized as a surrender to the extremists appeared on the verge of collapse, witnesses and officials said.

WASHINGTON – President Obama’s complex, costly and far-reaching strategy for Afghanistan, one that links success there with stability in neighboring Pakistan, embarks on a high-stakes shakedown cruise this week.

The leaders of both nations, Pakistan’s Asif Ali Zardari and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, are in Washington for meetings with Obama, who will emphasize U.S. intentions to build a strong and lasting regional alliance.

It’s a mission that will take many years, cost billions of dollars, put more American troops at risk and be undertaken against historically poor odds.

Obama’s aim, administration officials say, is to fully engage both leaders in his grand regional strategy. The idea is to turn both countries into full-fledged U.S. allies, rather than treating them as platforms on which the United States fights militant enemies and then goes home.

U.S. failure in either or both countries could add vastly to threats to U.S. security. Fighting rages in both nations, primarily against Taliban militants – the fundamentalist Islamic force that provides sanctuary for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders in the nearly impenetrable mountains that straddle the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

While diminished since it conducted the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Qaida remains robust in its safe haven along Afghanistan’s rugged border. A collapse of the democratically elected, secular government in Pakistan, meanwhile, could put the country’s sizable nuclear arsenal at risk of falling into militant hands.

The Taliban fighters, driven from power by U.S. and allied Afghan forces in the first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, have retaken large swaths of Afghanistan and are now making deep and threatening advances into Pakistan – within striking distance of the capital.

Obama will meet together and separately with Karzai and Zardari before he sends them off for detailed briefings at the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies and the State Department. They will sit down with Vice President Joe Biden as well.

Last week, Obama said the possibility of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into militant hands was not an immediate worry, but that he remained deeply concerned about the dangers advancing on the region.

“I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure,” Obama said at his last news conference.

Asked Monday about whether the sensitive issue of nuclear security would come up at the talks, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “I don’t doubt that (it) will be mentioned.”

But Gibbs said the president would be spending “a lot of time” trying to reinforce his new strategy, one that ensures the United States will “finally have a regional approach.”

In the longer term, Obama has said he is “more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile” and doesn’t “seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services . . . for the majority of the people.”

To help, Obama has asked Congress for quick approval of hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency military aid for Pakistan and is backing an aid package providing $7.5 billion over the next five years.

In Afghanistan, Obama is deploying 17,000 more U.S. troops into the south and east of the country, while working at the same time to ease humanitarian suffering in that desperately poor nation..

The plan for both nations is to militarily defeat the resurgent Taliban while boosting domestic support for the governments through aid programs.

While administration attention now focuses heavily on Pakistan, Afghanistan’s Karzai may be approaching his own visit with some sense of vindication.

Since his election, Obama has been rough on Karzai, calling him ineffective and his government corrupt.

But in the last couple of weeks, Karzai scored a major political coup by persuading the main challenger for this year’s presidential election, provincial governor Gul Agha Sherzai, not to run.

Karzai’s nearly certain re-election means the Obama administration will have to deal with the Afghan leader for the remainder of the U.S. president’s term.

On March 27, Obama presented his realigned plans for dealing with the Afghan war, a strategy that includes Pakistan as a potential partner rather than a nation reluctant to help fight the Taliban.

Wednesday’s meetings will offer a glimmer of how that’s working so far.

Steven R. Hurst, who has covered foreign policy for 30 years, reports from the White House for The Associated Press.

KABUL – The international Red Cross confirmed Wednesday that civilians were found in graves and rubble where Afghan officials alleged U.S. bombs killed had dozens. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington “deeply, deeply” regretted the loss of innocent life.

Women and children were among dozens of bodies in two villages targeted by airstrikes, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported Wednesday, after sending a team to the district. The U.S. military sent a brigadier general to the region to investigate.

A former Afghan government official said up to 120 people died in the bombing Monday evening.

Opening a meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. State Department in Washington, Clinton said Wednesday that any loss of innocent life was “particularly painful.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in Washington for his first meeting with President Barack Obama, thanked Clinton for “showing concern and regret” and said he hoped the countries “can work together to completely reduce civilian casualties in the struggle against terrorism.”

Karzai will raise the issue of civilian deaths with Obama, a statement from Karzai’s office said.

The first images from the bombings in Farah province emerged Wednesday. Photos from the site obtained by The Associated Press showed villagers burying the dead in about a dozen fresh graves, while others dug through the rubble of demolished mud-brick homes.

The international Red Cross team in Farah’s Bala Baluk district on Tuesday saw “dozens of bodies in each of the two locations that we went to,” said spokeswoman Jessica Barry.

“There were bodies, there were graves, and there were people burying bodies when we were there,” she said. “We do confirm women and children. There were women and children.”

Karzai ordered an investigation and the U.S. military sent a brigadier general to Farah to head a U.S. investigation, said Col. Greg Julian, a U.S. spokesman. Afghan military and police officials were also part of the investigative team.

Civilian deaths have caused increasing friction between the Afghan and U.S. governments, and Karzai has long pleaded with American officials to reduce civilian casualties in their operations. U.S. and NATO officials accuse the Taliban militants of fighting from within civilian homes, thus putting them in danger.

Mohammad Nieem Qadderdan, a former district chief of Bala Buluk, said between 100 and 120 people were killed in the attacks. He said villagers were still uncovering bodies, some of which were missing limbs or were torn into small pieces, he said.

“People are still looking through the rubble,” Qadderdan said. “We need more people to help us. Many families left the villages, fearing other strikes.”

Provincial authorities have told villagers not to bury the bodies, but instead to line them up for the officials conducting the investigation to see, Qadderdan said.

The fighting broke out Monday soon after Taliban fighters — including Taliban from Pakistan and Iran — massed in Farah province in western Afghanistan, said Belqis Roshan, a member of Farah’s provincial council. The provincial police chief, Abdul Ghafar, said 25 militants and three police officers died in that battle near the village of Ganjabad in Bala Baluk district, a Taliban-controlled area near the border with Iran.

Villagers told Afghan officials they put children, women, and elderly men in several housing compounds in the village of Gerani — about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) to the east — to keep them safe. But villagers said fighter aircraft later targeted those compounds, killing a majority of those inside, according to Roshan and other officials.

A Western official in Kabul said Marine special operations forces — which fall under the U.S. coalition — called in the airstrikes. The official asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.

Villagers brought about 30 bodies, including women and children, to Farah city to show the governor Tuesday, said Abdul Basir Khan, a member of the provincial council.

Journalists and human rights workers can rarely visit remote battle sites to verify claims of civilian casualties. U.S. officials say Taliban militants sometimes force villagers to lie and say civilians have died in coalition strikes. But the international Red Cross report and other official accounts added weight to villagers’ claims in Bala Baluk.

In remarks in the United States on Tuesday, Karzai alluded to the problem of civilian casualties without mentioning the bombing deaths. He said the success of the new U.S. war strategy depends on “making sure absolutely that Afghans don’t suffer — that Afghan civilians are protected.”

“This war against terrorism will succeed only if we fight it from a higher platform of morality,” he said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Asked later to clarify, Karzai said, “We must be conducting this war as better human beings,” and recognize that “force won’t buy you obedience.”

An Afghan government commission previously found that an August 2008 operation by U.S. forces killed 90 civilians in Azizabad, a finding backed by the U.N. The U.S. originally said no civilians died; a high-level investigation later concluded 33 civilians were killed.

After the Azizabad killings, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, announced a directive last September meant to reduce such deaths. He ordered commanders to consider breaking away from a firefight in populated areas rather than pursue militants into villages.

A U.S. army soldier belonging to Bandit Troop, 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, briefs his Iraqi army colleagues while on patrol in east Baghdad, Iraq. Iraq will not extend the June 30, 2009 deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from urban areas, a spokesman said Monday despite concerns about a resurgence of violence in recent weeks.

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s government Monday ruled out allowing U.S. combat troops to remain in Iraqi cities after the June 30 deadline for their withdrawal, despite concern that Iraqi forces cannot cope with the security challenge following a resurgence of bombings in recent weeks.

Asking U.S. forces to stay in the cities, including volatile Mosul in the north, would be embarrassing for Iraq’s prime minister, who has staked his political future on claims that the country has turned the corner in the war against Sunni and Shiite extremists.

The departure of heavily armed combat troops from bases inside the cities is important psychologically to many Iraqis, who are eager to regain control of their country after six years of war and U.S. military occupation.

U.S. officials played down the Iraqi decision, with Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman saying it’s up to the Iraqi government to request an extension of the U.S. presence in the cities and “we intend to fully abide by” terms of the security agreement.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, told reporters Monday that violence had not risen to a level that would force a change in the withdrawal schedule.

Last month, however, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, said he was worried that Iraqi forces won’t be ready to assume full responsibility for Mosul by the end of June.

Privately, some U.S. officers fear the Iraqis may lose control of Mosul within a few months after American forces pull out of Iraq’s third largest city, where al-Qaida and other Sunni militants remain active.

The U.S.-Iraq security agreement that took effect this year calls for American combat troops to leave urban areas by the end of June, with all U.S. forces out of the country by the end of 2011.

But a series of high-profile bombings has raised questions whether Iraqi forces can assume more security responsibilities, especially in Mosul.

Nationwide, at least 451 people were killed in political violence last month, compared with 335 in March, 288 in February and 242 in January, according to an Associated Press tally.

Even in Baghdad, where violence is down sharply from levels of two years ago, attacks are continuing.

On Monday, two car bombs exploded almost simultaneously near the Oil Ministry and a police academy, killing at least three people and wounding eight.

Although those casualties were relatively low, the attack was significant because it occurred in a sensitive, well-guarded area in the heart of the Iraqi capital.

The security agreement allows Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to request an extension of the deadlines if he feels Iraqi forces need help. But the prime minister’s spokesman said the withdrawal deadlines, including the June 30 date, were “non-extendable.”

“These dates cannot be extended and this is consistent with the transfer and handover of responsibility to Iraqi security forces,” spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

Kurdish officials would prefer to keep U.S. troops in Mosul after the deadline.

“I have doubts about security and stability in Mosul,” Kurdish politician Saadi Ahmed Pera said. “Therefore, U.S forces should stay in Mosul until all the pending problems among political groups in the city are solved.”

However, many other key Iraqi politicians, including the newly elected leadership in Mosul, oppose keeping U.S. combat troops in urban areas after the June deadline.

Al-Maliki, a Shiite, needs the support of the Sunni leadership in Mosul as he prepares for national elections by the end of the year.

The new governor of the Mosul area told the AP on Monday that the departure of U.S. troops from the city will actually reduce violence, since much of it is directed at the Americans.

“A U.S. withdrawal will reduce the number of targets,” Gov. Atheel al-Nujaifi said. “We believe it’s important for U.S. troops to stay in camps outside the cities to provide help only if needed.”

The requirement to leave the cities applies only to combat troops and not to trainers, advisers and others in noncombat roles. The agreement does not preclude combat soldiers from patrolling in Baghdad, Mosul and other cities from bases outside the city limits.

But prominent Shiite lawmaker Abbas al-Bayati said extending the June 30 deadline would “send the wrong signal to the Iraqi people” that the Americans might remain in the country indefinitely.

“Thus both sides must stand together to fulfill the withdrawal timetable,” he said.

U.S. combat troops largely pulled out of many cities in 2005 and 2006 but returned a year later as part of the U.S. troop surge that was designed to protect civilians from Shiite and Sunni extremists living in their neighborhoods.

This time, U.S. and Iraqi officials are gambling that Iraqi security forces are better trained and equipped to prevent the return of extremists than they were years ago.

Extending the deadline would also call into question al-Maliki’s claim that his government has set the country on the road to stability — despite the occasional spike in violence.

On Monday, al-Maliki told an audience in Paris that he would not allow Iraq to be used as a “base for any terrorist organization” and that the country was ready for foreign investment.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials believe security in Iraq remains fragile because the various religious and ethnic groups have still not agreed on power-sharing arrangements necessary for long-term stability.