US Embassy Convoy attacked (NYT 3/19/2007, GRAHAM BOWLEY and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA)

A suicide bomber attacked a US Embassy convoy which was comprised of four sport-utility vehicles, killed a 14-year old boy, and injured a “US Diplomat” and others, according to The Toronto Daily News. Apparently US Consul Ronald Neumann was not among the people in the convoy. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

UPI’s short accounting of the convoy incident continues with other news:

Taliban militants, meanwhile, cut off the ears and noses of three Afghan drivers who delivered fuel to a U.S. base in the eastern province of Nuristan Saturday, The Telegraph reported.

“After downloading their supplies into a coalition base in Nuristan, they were heading to Kunar,” Ghulamullah, the deputy chief of police in Nuristan, who uses one name, told The Telegraph. “On their way the Taliban stopped them and cut off their noses and ears.”

The newspaper reported the mutilation was reminiscent of a time when the Taliban ruled in Afghanistan, but was the first time such punishment has been handed to people for helping foreign troops.

Watch closely to the headlines coming out of Afghanistan.

An Italian journalist who was kidnapped in Afghanistan was released alive, but saw the beheading of one of the Afghans who were with him. (CBS News, AP, 3/19/2007)

(AP) An Italian journalist held for two weeks in Afghanistan said after his release Monday that he saw his captors cut off the head of one of the two Afghans kidnapped with him and thought he would be next to die.

In an interview with RAI Tg3 News, Daniele Mastrogiacomo described a harrowing experience. “I saw him be decapitated,” he said.

He said the kidnappers threw the Afghan to his knees and suffocated him in the sand as they cut his head off.

…on the Web site of his newspaper, La Repubblica, Mastrogiacomo said he slept in 15 different prisons that were “as small as sheep pens.” His hands and feet were chained, and he was made to walk for miles in the desert, he said.

These incidents mark the horrible reality of what Jack Idema forecast on his radio show, and through other avenues for the last two years. Just two weeks ago, V.P. Dick Cheney was visiting Bagram and a suicide bomber there killed 20 civilians outside the base.

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