Suicide Attack

AUSTIN, Texas - Robin De Haven was driving the company truck when he saw something that didn’t look right - a small plane, flying extremely low over a heavily congested area of Austin. The 28-year-old Iraq war veteran recalled yesterday how he then saw black smoke billowing from the glass building and rushed to the scene. There, where the plane had exploded into flames in a suicide attack fueled by antigovernment hatred, De Haven found five people trapped on the second floor of the burning office housing Internal Revenue Service employees.

A car bomb driven by two suspected suicide attackers exploded outside a police station in central Turkey, killing two policemen and wounding 16 people, the interior minister said. The two attackers were also killed. The two suspects sped through a paramilitary check point and detonated the powerful bomb outside the police station in the town of Pinarbasi, in the province of Kayseri, said Idris Naim Sahin, the interior minister. Two police officers were killed and 16 people including children of police officers staying in nearby police lodgings were wounded, Sahin said.

GALLE, Sri Lanka -- Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels posing as fishermen blew up two boats in a suicide ambush on a Sri Lankan naval base yesterday, killing at least one sailor in the first such attack on the southern coast popular with tourists, the military said. A pro-rebel website said 15 rebels took part in the attack. Military officials could not confirm the number of insurgents involved, but it said all were killed. Two other sailors were left missing and 12 were wounded in the attack, which damaged two navy fast boats and another small boat in the resort town of Galle,...

KABUL - Two foreign doctors and their three Afghan colleagues have been kidnapped in a remote area in northeast Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday. Abdul Maroof Rasikh, the spokesman for the governor of Badakhshan Province, said it was unclear who kidnapped the five. He said they were snatched Tuesday while traveling on horseback between Yaftal and Ragh districts about 55 miles from the provincial capital of Faizabad. He said the five were employed by a nonprofit humanitarian organization.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber rammed a truck loaded with explosives into a police station in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing a child and six other civilians, police said. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. The attack was the second to occur over the weekend in the Kohat area, illustrating the resilient nature of militant networks in Pakistan despite army offensives targeting their sanctuaries along the Afghan border. At least 26 people were wounded, including six police, officials said.

BAGHDAD -- Two suicide bombers disguised as police infiltrated the heavily fortified Interior Ministry compound in Baghdad and blew themselves up yesterday during celebrations of National Police Day, killing 29 Iraqis. The attackers died before getting near the US ambassador and senior Iraqi officials at the festivities, but the blasts capped a particularly deadly week for American and Iraqi forces. The escalating violence after the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections -- at least 498 Iraqis and 54 US troops have been killed -- took place as Iraq's electoral commission again...

The BBC says one of its reporters has died in an insurgent attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 17 people. The broadcaster says that Ahmad Omid Khpolwak was killed in Thursday's suicide attack in the southern Uruzgan province. Afghan authorities said the attack left at least 17 people dead. BBC says the stringer was 25 years old and joined the network in 2008. Three suicide bombers blew up vehicles packed with explosives in three almost simultaneous attacks in Uruzgan.

BAGHDAD -- A suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad early this morning , collapsing the steel structure and sending cars toppling into the Tigris River below, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed and 26 injured, according to hospital officials. That toll was expected to rise. Police were trying to rescue as many as 20 people whose cars plummeted into the water . Hours after the blast, waves lapped up against twisted girders sinking into the water, as police patrol boats searched for survivors.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- In the most brazen attack yet on the city's heavily guarded center, a car bomber rammed into an American Humvee outside the US Embassy yesterday, killing himself and 16 other people, including two US soldiers. It was the Afghan capital's deadliest suicide attack since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban. Twenty-nine people were wounded in the crash and explosion. A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the privately run Pajhwok Afghan News Agency.

Two foreign doctors and their three Afghan colleagues have been kidnapped in a remote area in the extreme northeast Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday. Abdul Maroof Rasikh, the spokesman for the governor of Badakhshan province, said it was unclear who kidnapped the five. He said the kidnapping occurred on Tuesday as the group was traveling on horseback between Yaftal and Ragh districts about 90 kilometers (56 miles) from the provincial capital of Faizabad. He says the five were employed by a nonprofit humanitarian organization.

BAGHDAD - In the face of spiraling costs and Iraqi officials who say they never wanted it in the first place, the State Department has slashed - and may jettison entirely by the end of the year - a multibillion-dollar police training program that was to have been the centerpiece of a hugely expanded civilian mission here. What was originally envisioned as a training cadre of about 350 US law enforcement officers was quickly scaled back to 190 and then to 100. The latest restructuring calls for 50 advisers, but most experts and even some State Department officials say even they may...

DAMASCUS - The latest suicide bombings in the Syrian capital showed an increasing ruthlessness: The attackers struck during rush hour, setting off one blast to draw a crowd before unleashing a much bigger one, killing 55 people and leaving the street strewn with rubble and mangled bodies. For many, the Al Qaeda-style tactics recall those once familiar in the country's eastern neighbor, Iraq, raising fears that Syria's conflict is drifting further away from the Arab Spring calls for political change and closer to a bloody insurgency.

The Obama administration on Thursday condemned a suicide attack in Syria's capital that killed 55 people and expressed concern that al-Qaida may be increasingly taking advantage of the country's prolonged instability. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters that U.S. intelligence indicates "an al-Qaida presence in Syria," but said the extent of its activity was unclear. "Frankly we need to continue to do everything we can to determine what kind of influence they're trying to exert there," Panetta said.

Taliban militants dressed in police uniforms blew themselves up after being caught trying to sneak through a checkpoint Thursday in eastern Afghanistan, killing five people, authorities said. Police at the checkpoint in Paktika province's Yayakhil district became suspicious of the men and told them to stop, said provincial police chief Dawlit Khan Zadran. The men refused, triggering an hour-long gunbattle during which two attackers were fatally shot and the remaining four detonated vests rigged with explosives, Zadran said.

KABUL - Afghanistan's intelligence agency said Thursday it prevented a large terrorist attack, arresting a Pakistani driving a truck packed with explosives. The suspect was arrested on a main road in Kabul's east, the agency said in a statement. It said the man was going to use the truck bomb in a suicide attack. The agency did not say what the suspected target was. The arrest came a day after a suicide attack on the same road killed seven people. In that attack, one militant detonated his car bomb outside a compound where foreigners live, while two other...

Authorities say gunmen from a radical Islamist sect shot and killed two guards during a prison break in northeast Nigeria. Borno state police spokesman Samuel Tizhe said Friday the attack happened overnight Thursday near the village of Kunshi. Tizhe said gunmen first attacked a police station, then freed all the prisoners. Tizhe said police have made 23 arrests since the prison break. It was not immediately clear how many inmates escaped from the prison after the attack.

Afghanistan's intelligence agency says it has prevented a large terrorist attack in the capital, arresting a Pakistani national driving a truck packed with explosives in Kabul. The agency says in a statement that the man was arrested Thursday on a major road in the east of the city. It says the man was going to use the truck bomb in a suicide attack. The agency does not say what the suspected target was. It says it will release more details as they became available. The arrest comes a day after a suicide attack on the same road killed seven people.