Terrorists in Kabul Attack UN Guesthouses and Hotel

UPDATE: Insurgents Wednesday morning attacked two guesthouses and a hotel in downtown Kabul that housed United Nations and other international staff, in one of their most daring attacks on the Afghan capital.

According to the Associated Press, at least seven people were killed in the guesthouse attacks, including three United Nations staff.

There also were sounds of explosions elsewhere in the city, suggesting a large-scale, coordinated attack on the capital.

The assailants managed to take over one of the guesthouses, Bakhtar, but were repelled by security guards at another, the Imperial. According to a U.N. spokesman in Kabul, three U.N. staff members were killed in the Bakhtar attack, and an unknown number was injured.

By midmorning the hostage crisis appeared to be over and the building secured, with firemen trying to extinguish fire amid billowing smoke on the roof.

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UN staff killed in Kabul attack

The attack began at dawn on Wednesday

At least three UN employees have been killed in an attack in the centre of the Afghan capital Kabul, the UN says.

Heavy gunfire and an explosion were heard at a guesthouse used by the UN, after militants entered the building.

An Afghan official later told the BBC that six foreigners and three gunmen were killed in the attack for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

There are also reports of rockets being fired at the Serena Hotel in the city, which is used by diplomats.

There is no information yet on whether anyone has been injured or killed at the hotel, but about 100 people inside at the time were taken to secure rooms.

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Afghan forces exchanged gunfire with a group of terrorists holed up inside an international guest house in the centre of Kabul on Wednesday, police said.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said it was possible some of its staff and other foreigners were inside.

Intense automatic weapons fire and an explosion resounded in the capital, and plumes of black smoke rose above buildings.

A Reuters witness said a number of streets had been cordoned off by the police as the gunfire continued, and sirens reverberated across the city.

“There are five or six terrorists inside,” said Waheed Sadiqi, a policeman at the scene.

An increasingly resurgent Taliban have vowed to stage attacks ahead of a second-round run-off in Afghanistan’s presidential election on Nov. 7.

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AFP reprts

Afghan police were locked in a stand-off with a “group of terrorists” holed up in an apartment building in central Kabul on Wednesday, a police officer at the scene said.

The police officer told AFP that one of the group detonated an explosives vest before the rest of the group fled into the apartment building in a crowded neighbourhood near Kabul’s Chicken Street.

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” he said.

An AFP reporter and photographer saw a number of wounded being taken from the area to a local hospital, including at least two foreigners.

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North Korea to Restart Nuclear Weapons Plant

North Korea vowed Tuesday to bolster its nuclear deterrent and boycott six-party talks aimed at its denuclearization in protest of a U.N. Security Council statement condemning the country’s recent rocket launch.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it “resolutely condemns” the action by the United Nations, which it said “rampantly” infringes upon the country’s sovereignty and “severely debases” the people’s dignity.

“We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces,” the statement said.

The statement also said that “six-party talks that we are taking part in are not necessary any more.”

Those negotiations, which also involve China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, began in 2003 and have been aimed at achieving North Korea’s denuclearization.

The North also said it will restore nuclear facilities it has been disabling in line with an international disarmament-for-aid deal negotiated under the six-party process and resume operating them.

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North Korea Launches Rocket Despite Protests

North Korea has launched a rocket, despite international appeals not to go ahead.

Officials from Japan, South Korea and the US confirmed lift-off at 0230 GMT. The rocket appeared to have passed over Japan to the Pacific, Tokyo said.

North Korea says it is sending a satellite into orbit, but its neighbours suspect the launch could be a cover for a long-range missile test.

The US called it “provocative”, while Japan said it was “regrettable”.

The South Korean government said it would “deal firmly and resolutely” with Pyongyang.

The rocket blasted off just before midday on Sunday from the Musudan-ri launch pad in the north-east of North Korea.

“The projectile launched from North Korea today appears to have passed over towards the Pacific,” the Japanese prime minister’s office said in a statement.

The US State Department and South Korea’s presidential office also confirmed the launch.

Japan said it did not try to intercept the rocket, as it had indicated that it would if its territory was threatened.

North Korea’s neighbours say the launch violates United Nations resolutions.

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U.S. Says Iran Has Enough Material for Nuclear Bomb

The United States now believes that Iran has amassed enough uranium that with further purification could be used to build an atomic bomb, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared Sunday.

The statement by the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, went further than previous, official judgments of the Iranian nuclear threat, and it essentially confirmed a new report by the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, which found that Iran had enough nuclear material for a bomb.

“We think they do, quite frankly,” Admiral Mullen said on “State of the Union” on CNN. “And Iran having a nuclear weapon, I’ve believed for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations agency, reported on Feb. 19 that its inspectors had found that Iran had understated by a third how much uranium it had enriched.

In its study, the agency declared for the first time that the amount of low-enriched uranium that Tehran had stockpiled, estimated at more than a ton, was sufficient to make an atomic bomb, but only with added purification.

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Iran Has Fuel For Nuclear Bomb – IAEA

The report by the IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, surprises diplomats and arms control experts. Officials note that major obstacles remain to building a weapon.

Iran has made no such gestures and has slowed its expansion of machinery producing nuclear fuel, having increased production capacity by less than 5% over the last three months, according to a report issued Thursday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Another IAEA report released Thursday raises suspicions about graphite and uranium particles found at an alleged nuclear site in Syria that was bombed by Israel in 2007.

The reports, the latest updates from the arms control watchdog for the United Nations, show that Iran had amassed about 2,227 pounds of low-enriched, or reactor-grade, nuclear fuel by late January. Physicists estimate that producing the 55 pounds or so of highly enriched, or weapons-grade, uranium needed for an atomic warhead requires 2,205 to 3,748 pounds of low-enriched uranium.

Iran’s increased supply of low-enriched uranium surprised diplomats and arms control experts who had assumed that Iran would need until the end of the year to acquire enough fuel for a bomb.

One expert, David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said he was “blindsided” by the report.

“We are surprised,” Albright said. “We did not expect this.”

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Senior U.N. Official Kidnapped in Pakistan

A senior U.N. official was kidnapped in southwest Pakistan and his driver was shot dead, a U.N. information officer told CNN.

The official’s name has not been released because his family has not been officially informed, said Ishrat Rizvi, a U.N. information officer in Islamabad.

The official was kidnapped in the town of Chaman, near the city of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan. The exact time of the incident is unknown. Law enforcement agencies are investigating.