Carnage in Afghanistan

U.S. special operations forces and Afghan commandos conducted a predawn raid on a building filled with dozens of Al Qaeda fighters in southern Afghanistan, killing over 20 of the militants, officials said Monday.

Helmand police chief Col. Ehsamudin Helmandi said Afghan special forces killed 22 Taliban militants in addition to the Al Qaeda fighters. At least 14 other militants were wounded and some were taken prisoner as a result of the operations.


Helmandi said six Al Qaeda terrorists were also arrested in the operation, including Pakistani and Bangladeshi citizens.

No U.S. forces were wounded, according to American officials. Some Afghan special forces were wounded in the fight, though exactly how many was not immediately clear. However, an Afghan official claimed Monday that dozens of civilians were killed or wounded during the raid.


The police chief blamed the Taliban and Al Qaeda for causing the civilian casualties in Musa Qala district because they used the local residents as human shields. The exact number of civilians killed is not immediately clear.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said in a statement on Monday that the leader was "saddened and devastated to hear that civilians have lost their lives in an incident in Helmand, despite President Ghani's repeated call for extra cautions in conducting military operations."


The joint operation destroyed a major Taliban hub in Helmand, which was also a gathering point for Al Qaeda fighters moving through the area. The Al Qaeda fighters were discovered as a result of communication intercepts, U.S. officials said, declining to elaborate because of the sensitivity of the intelligence.

The son of bin Laden killed in US raid

Hamza bin Laden , the son of the late al-Qaida leader, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. A statement issued in President Donald Trump’s name gave no further details. American officials have said there are indications that the CIA, not the U.S. military, conducted the strike. The CIA declined comment on whether the agency was involved.

The White House statement said Hamza bin Laden’s death “not only deprives al-Qaida of important leadership skills and the symbolic connection to his father, but undermines important operational activities of the group.” It said Osama bin Laden’s son “was responsible for planning and dealing with various terrorist groups.” The U.S. officials had suspected this summer that Hamza bin Laden was dead, based on intelligence reports and the fact that he had not been heard from in some time.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Fox News Channel in a late August interview that it was “my understanding” that Hamza bin Laden was dead. A U.S. official familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity about intelligence-gathering said bin laden was killed in the past 18 months. Confirming such a high-profile death can take a long time, said the official, who declined to say what led the U.S. to report bin Laden’s death with certainty.

The younger bin Laden had been viewed as an eventual heir to the leadership of al-Qaida, and the group’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, had praised him in a 2015 video that appeared on jihadi websites, calling him a “lion from the den of al-Qaida.” Bin Laden’s death leaves Zawahiri with the challenge of finding a different successor. Hamza bin Laden is believed to have been born in 1989, the year of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, where his father became known among the mujahedeen fighters.

His father returned to Saudi Arabia and later fled to Sudan after criticizing the kingdom for allowing U.S. troops to deploy in the country during the 1991 Gulf War. He later fled Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996, where he declared war against the U.S. As al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden oversaw attacks that included the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen. He and others plotted and executed the 2001 attacks against the United States that led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. U.S. Navy SEALs killed the elder bin Laden in a raid on a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.

Hamza bin Laden began appearing in militant videos and recordings in 2015 as an al-Qaida spokesman. “If you think that your sinful crime that you committed in Abbottabad has passed without punishment, then you thought wrong,” he said in his first audio recording. After the Sept. 11 attacks, a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan sought to topple the Taliban, an ally of al-Qaida, and seize the elder bin Laden. He escaped and split from his family as he crossed into Pakistan. Hamza was 12 when he saw his father for the last time — receiving a parting gift of prayer beads. “It was as if we pulled out our livers and left them there,” he wrote of the separation.

Hamza and his mother followed other al-Qaida members into Pakistan and then Iran, where other al-Qaida leaders hid them, according to experts and analysis of documents seized after U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Iran later put the al-Qaida members on its soil into custody. During this time, Hamza married. In March 2010, Hamza and others left Iranian custody. He went to Pakistan’s Waziristan province, where he asked for weapons training, according to a letter to the elder bin Laden. His mother left for Abbottabad, joining her husband in his hideout. On May 2, 2011, the Navy SEAL team raided Abbottabad, killing Osama bin Laden and his son Khalid, as well as others. Saber and other wives living in the house were imprisoned. Hamza again disappeared. In August 2015, a video emerged on jihadi websites of al-Zawahri introducing “a lion from the den of al-Qaida” — Hamza bin Laden. Since then, Hamza had been featured in al-Qaida messages, delivering speeches on everything from the war in Syria to Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia on his first foreign trip as president. But he hadn’t been heard from since a message in March 2018, in which he threatened the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Post navigation

US private payrolls accelerate

Recession? What recession? US company payrolls surged by 195,000 in August, well above Wall Street estimates and at a time when fears have been growing about a looming recession, according to a report Thursday from ADP and Moody’s Analytics. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a gain of just 140,000 following July’s 142,000, which was reduced downward by 14,000 from the original count. August’s growth was the best showing since the 255,000 added in April. The numbers come amid speculation that the decade-long economic expansion is coming to an end. The New York Federal Reserve puts the chance of a recession at 39% in the next 12 months, the highest level since the Great Recession that ended in mid-2009. “Businesses are holding firm on their payrolls despite the slowing economy,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, said in a statement. “Hiring has moderated, but layoffs remain low. As long as this continues recession will remain at bay.” However, he also said that the current pace of job growth needs to continue at a time when various sectors, including manufacturing and agriculture, are falling. “This highlights why the economy is at risk, because if job growth slows any further that means unemployment will start to rise and that will be the fodder for recession,” Zandi added in a subsequent CNBC interview. Fully 100,000 of the new jobs came in the education and health services (58,000) and leisure and hospitality industries (42,000). Health care and social assistance was the fastest-growing sub-component, with 45,000 positions added. In all, services accounted for 184,000 of the total, with goods-producing industries adding 11,000. Manufacturing grew by 8,000 and construction contributed 6,000, though natural resources and mining saw a reduction of 2,000. Information services saw a loss of 6,000 jobs. Companies with 50 to 499 employees were the largest growth sector at 77,000, though small businesses grew by 66,000. Firms with more than 1,000 employees saw growth of 47,000. The ADP/Moody’s count comes a day ahead of the more closely watched Labor Department nonfarm payrolls report. Dow Jones estimates that the report will show payroll growth of 150,000 after July’s 164,000 with the unemployment rate staying at 3.7%. The continued job growth shows the U.S. economy “remains in relatively good shape” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, though he added that he thinks the government report will show growth of just 110,000. Economists occasionally will use the APP/Moody’s report to tweak their estimates. On balance, the two counts have run close through 2019, with the mean, or average, monthly ADP count topping the government by 5,800, and the median, or midpoint, total undershooting the Labor Department’s tally by 16,000.