Tagged: Taliban

As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta notes that the last of the 33,000 so-called surge troops who were added to the U.S. force in Afghanistan last year have now left the country, there's this interesting news:

Update at 10:40 a.m. ET:

NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson tells our Newscast unit the Taliban is claiming responsibility for both attacks, and that two U.S. soldiers are among the injured. One of the bombs exploded about 40 miles west of Kabul, on a road leading to a nearby U.S. military base. The deaths are numerous because there's a busy shopping center there. The other bomb went off near the district governor's compound.

Seventeen people at a party in southern Afghanistan were attacked and beheaded by insurgents, officials said Monday.

The civilians were apparently targeted because they had "flouted the extreme brand of Islam embraced by the militants," The Associated Press reports. A government spokesman blamed the Taliban.

The news agency quoted a district government chief as saying the party involving music and dancing, activities shunned by the Taliban.