The Earth Moved Again and Taliban Attacks

Woke up around 10:15 pm last night (Saturday, 29 Oct 09) to another earth quake. Supposedly around 6.0 magnitude. I just looked around and went back to sleep. They are getting more frequesnt. Hadn't seen any till a few weeks ago. Since I am living in a shipping container -- no problem. The room just sways, and puts me back to sleep. When I woke up I thought I had drempt it. But someone else asked me if I felt the earth quake so it must have happened.

On Wednesday the Taliban attacked a supposed "safe" house where some of the UN employees reside. A total of 11 people were killed. There were suicide bombers with suicide vests on that attacked with AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades. I am glad I don't live outside the wire. Several people in our branch live on that street. Our new Relief Society President lives across the street. She has only been here two weeks.

It's nuts -- they keep the military on base (armed) and they put the civilians off base (unarmed). If they want me to go and live outside I'll tell them to give me a gun.

CBS News Report:

Taliban militants wearing suicide vests and police uniforms stormed a guest house used by U.N. staff in the heart of the Afghan capital Wednesday, killing 11 people including five U.N. workers.

The two-hour attack, which began shortly before 6 a.m., sent people jumping out of windows or hopping from roof to roof to escape a fire that engulfed part of the three-story building. A man from Kansas City, Mo., said he held off gunmen with a Kalashnikov until a group of guests escaped through the laundry room.

It was the biggest in a series of attacks intended to undermine next month's presidential runoff election. At least 25 U.N. staff were staying at the guest house, most of them advisers for the Nov. 7 balloting.

In a phone call Wednesday to CBS News' Sami Yousafzai, Taliban commander for Kabul city Qari Talha claimed responsibility for the attack and said more violence in the Afghan capital could be expected before the planned Nov. 7 vote.

The Taliban has warned Afghans to stay away from the polls or risk attacks.

The chief of the United Nations' mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said the attack "will not deter the U.N. from continuing all its work" in the country.

"We will not be deterred from this noble mission," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in New York.

One of the U.N. dead was an American, the U.S. Embassy said.

John Christopher "Chris" Turner, a trucker from Kansas City, said the attackers appeared well organized and were able to penetrate the building, located on a residential street.

Flushed and with black stains on his hands and face, Turner said 40 people were staying at the guest house, of whom about 25 took refuge in the laundry room at the back of the building under his protection.

"I am armed. I carry an AK-47 and I kept firing it to keep the attackers away from the group I was guarding," he said. The group later jumped over a back wall to take refuge in a house behind the guest house, he said.

It was not possible to reach others who had been staying at the guest house to verify Turner's account. They were being evacuated to Dubai for counseling, the U.N. said. Turner did not have a weapon when he spoke with an Associated Press reporter.

Miles Robertson, an Australian working as an election adviser, said he and his wife fled to a closet in their bedroom when they heard gunfire.

"We made sure the door was locked. I actually put my wife in the cupboard to hide, and made the room look as if it wasn't occupied," Robertson said as he retrieved belongings from the burned-out guest house in the afternoon.

But then came the fire, which Robertson said appeared to be in the room next door.

"We realized that there was no way for us to go out under the stairs or any way for us to come outside," said Robertson, a lanky middle-aged man wearing a sweat shirt. "I opened the window and stepped out to the landing out front, and had a volley of shots fired at me."

So he ducked back into the bedroom, but it had filled with smoke. He worried about dying of smoke inhalation.

"I went bathroom, wet a towel and kept it over the face of my wife and myself as we crouched beside the window," he said.

Meanwhile, outside, "there was a lot of indistinguishable yelling and calling." Robertson said he made four phone calls to people saying they had about 10 minutes to get them out "because obviously the place was on fire."

He was too exhausted to finish the account, but a colleague said the Robertsons eventually climbed out a window as the fire raged and scrambled over the roofs of neighboring houses to a friend's home nearby.

A security guard, Noor Allah, said he saw a woman screaming for help in English from a second-story window and watched as terrified guests leapt from windows. Afghan police using ladders rescued at least one wounded foreigner.

Police were later seen pulling the charred body of what appeared to be a woman from a second-floor bedroom. One officer carried an injured German man by piggyback away from the scene.

About a mile away from the guest house, one rocket struck the "outer limit" of the presidential palace but caused no casualties, presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said.

Thirty minutes after the U.N. attack there was another coordinated strike, reports CBS News correspondent Mandy Clark. This time rockets were fired at Kabul's luxury Serena hotel, forcing 100 guests to flee into an underground bunker.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as "an inhuman act" and called on the army and police to strengthen security around all international institutions.

(CBS)Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attacks in a telephone call to the AP, saying three militants with suicide vests, grenades and machine guns carried out the guest house assault.

He said three days ago that the Taliban issued a statement threatening anyone working on the Nov. 7 runoff election between Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah.

"This is our first attack," he said.

An official with the U.N. election team said that the Bakhtar guest house was home to the largest concentration of U.N. election workers in the city.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards initially said six U.N. staff were killed and nine other U.N. employees were wounded. Later, he revised the figure to five, indicating one body may have been counted twice.

Afghan police and U.N. officials said 11 people in all were killed, including the U.N. staff, three attackers, two security guards and an Afghan civilian. It was not clear whether there were any other attackers besides the three killed.

The dead included the brother-in-law of one of Afghanistan's most powerful governors, Gul Agha Sherzai. The man was killed by a stray bullet as he watched the gunfight from a nearby house, according to provincial spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai.

Edwards said the U.N. would have to evaluate "what this means for our work in Afghanistan."

"This has clearly been a very serious incident for us," Edwards said. "We've not had an incident like this in the past."

The Aug. 19, 2003, truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people, prompted the U.N. to pull out of Iraq for several years.

Afghans are to vote Nov. 7 in a second-round election after U.N.-backed auditors threw out nearly a third of Karzai's votes from the Aug. 20 ballot, determining widespread fraud. That pushed Karzai's totals below the 50 percent threshold needed for a first-round victory in the 36-candidate field.

Dozens of people were killed in Taliban attacks during the August balloting, helping drive down turnout.

Enjoying Life

I am enjoying life here in Afghanistan. Seems kind of strange to say. Other people hate it. I have gotten into a routine and time goes by fast when you work 10 hour days -- 6 days a week. Friday's -- my day off, come around quickly. I spend my free time watching movies and reading books. Would like to get into my genealogy more, but don't have a lot of my resources that I have a home. Still can search the internet and work on my lines. Don't have much space to store things though.

My closet measures 18 inches wide. So everything I wear must fit into that space. I have to send things home that I don't wear becuase there isn't room to store it.

The Bazaars they have Friday afternoon are interesting. You can get pirated movies from China for $2 each. Some are very poor quality. You can tell they were taped by a guy sitting in the theater. Especially when you hear people talking and coughing around him and when the movie is over the people stand up in front of him. Kind of funny though.

You can get a custom made suit for $75, $100 if you want two pair of pants. You can also buy jewelry and marble things for very cheap.

Will hope to see veryone soon -- for Thanksgiving.

Earth Quake Hits Afghanistan -- I Felt the Earth Move

Strong Quake Strikes Afghanistan, Pakistan
Thursday , October 22, 2009

KABUL —

A strong earthquake centered in the towering Hindu Kush mountains shook a wide area of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan early Friday, swaying buildings in the Afghan and Pakistani capitals.

There were no initial reports of damage or casualties from the quake, which struck about 12:21 a.m. Afghan time.

However, the temblor was centered in a remote mountain area where communications are poor and reports of casualties take time to reach the capital.

The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 and was centered in the mountains about 167 miles northeast of Kabul and 140 miles west of Mingaora, Pakistan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Buildings shook in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and the capital Islamabad, and the quake was felt as far east as Lahore near the Indian border, Pakistani television stations reported.

The Afghan Interior Ministry said it had no immediate reports of deaths or damage.

Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said that even though the quake was centered in a remote area, casualties were still possible given the size of the temblor. Caruso said Friday's quake was felt as far away as New Delhi, the Indian capital.

Caruso said the area is capable of producing large earthquakes because of the compression created when what is now India slammed against the Asian continent millions of years ago.

He said the largest quake recorded in that area was 7.8 on March 14, 1965.

I had just gone to the bathroom and had gotten into bed and the room started shaking. I wasn't worried since I live in a storage container. The after shocks, however,kept me awake.

Branch Picture

These are pictures of the Kabul Military Branch last Friday after church.

Been Busy

I've been really busy lately and haven't been able to post anything on my blog. The District Clerk went on vacation for three weeks and the District President asked me to fill in for him. A job keeping track of about 600 members in Afghanistan. Quite a job since they come and go and move around a lot.

I have also been going outside the wire a lot to attend District Presidency Meetings at the ISAF HQ. It is mainly at night so the danger level is lower. However, there are still threats out there.

I have tried to maintain a low profile here so don't go outside that much.

The weather here has cooled off -- 70s during the day and 40s at night. Will be dropping to the 60s during the day and 30s at night this next week. Winter can't be that far away.

I'll be coming home for Thanksgiving so am looking forward to that. See you all then.

Bomb Blast at Indian Embassy/MOI

On the 8th of October 2009, a suicide bomber blew up a bomb at the Indian Embassy and Ministry of Interior here in Kabul, Afghanistan.

KABUL —  A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Indian Embassy in the busy center of Afghanistan's capital early Thursday, killing at least 12 civilians, destroying vehicles and blowing off the walls of shops, officials said.
At least 84 people, including members of Afghan security forces, were wounded in the attack, which struck a shop-lined road between the Indian Embassy and the Interior Ministry, said Health Ministry spokesman Ahmad Farid Raaid, spokesman for the Health Ministry.
The blast hit shortly after 8:30 a.m., just as residents were arriving to work. It shattered glass and rattled buildings more than a mile away. A huge brown plume of smoke was visible in the air as ambulances raced to the scene and carried away the wounded.
In New Delhi, India's Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said the Indian embassy was the target.
"I believe the suicide bomb was directed at the embassy since the suicide bomber came up to the outer perimeter wall of the embassy in a car loaded with explosives," Rao told reporters.
Three Indian paramilitary soldiers on guard duty at the embassy's watchtower were wounded by shrapnel, Rao said.
She said the intensity of the blast was similar to the one that occurred outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008 which killed dozens of civilians. The road in front of the embassy has been barricaded since then. The Afghan Interior Ministry is just across from Indian Embassy.
The explosion hit a day after the Afghanistan war reached its eighth anniversary and as President Barack Obama considered a request for between 10,000 and 40,000 additional troops prepared by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.
The Afghan capital has been hit numerous times by suicide bombers and roadside bombs, several since the run-up to the country's disputed Aug. 20 election. The attacks usually target international military forces or government installations, but Afghan businesses and civilians are also often killed or injured.
In the most recent attack in mid-September, a suicide car bomber rammed into an Italian military convoy on a road leading to the airport. That blast killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians.
Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said Thursday's explosion was also a homicide car bomb, but he had no details and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The Indian news channel CNN-IBN cited Jayant Prasad, Indian ambassador in Kabul, as saying there has been "extensive damage to the chancery." He said that the vehicle-borne bomb was so powerful that it blew off the some doors and windows of the embassy.
President Hamid Karzai's office condemned the attack.
AP Television News footage from Kabul on Thursday showed local residents and soldiers pulling a charred, severed leg out of a destroyed vehicle. Others carried an apparently lifeless body on a stretcher to an ambulance.
On another stretcher, a man lay face down, one arm hanging downward, his back left leg covered in blood.
One 21-year-old man named Najibullah said he had just opened his shop when the explosion went off, knocking him unconscious.
When he awoke, he said, he couldn't see anything.
"Dust was everywhere. People were shouting," said Najibullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name. "You couldn't see their faces because there was so much dust."
His white clothes were covered in blood after helping load four injured onto ambulances.
Two sport utility vehicles nearby were badly damaged, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. One of them had U.N. markings on its side.
U.N. spokesman Dan McNorton confirmed two of the world body's vehicles were near the blast and one was damaged. Both vehicles had only a driver inside, and neither was wounded. The United Nations typically uses armored vehicles in Kabul that are designed to withstand such attacks.
The blast could be heard miles away. Windows in dozens of surrounding shops at the scene of the blast were shattered, and walls of buildings were badly damaged in the blast, though none of the multistory buildings along the commercial thoroughfare had collapsed.
One injured man said the force of the explosion threw him into the air. Mohammad Arif said he was leaving the Indian Embassy when the blast tossed him against a concrete barrier. The left side of his head was bleeding as he spoke.