Pakistan: On Ground Updates - September 22, 2008

Pakistan: On Ground Updates
Pakistan Leaders Barely Missed Attack
Monday, September 22, 2008.

* IHT.com is reporting the following news this Monday morning and it starts off like this... Pakistan's president, prime minister and other members of the country's leadership were due to hold a dinner in the Marriott Hotel... Sunday... but changed the venue at the last minute before a deadly truck bomb exploded at the entrance to the hotel, killing 53 people, a senior Interior Ministry official said Monday...
Read the rest HERE
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* CNNMoney.com has this take on the above news...
Marriott: No Official Dinner Planned On Day Of Islamabad Blast
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* Meanwhile-- VOANEWS.com reports... Officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan say unidentified gunmen have kidnapped Afghanistan's consul-general in northwestern Pakistan. An Afghan consulate official says the gunmen ambushed Haji Abdul Khaliq Farahi Monday as he traveled home in Peshawar... The kidnappers were disguised as beggars when they stopped the Afghan diplomat's car on a bridge in the Hayyatabad residential area. Farahi's driver was killed in the assault... Farahi was due to become Afghanistan's next ambassador to Pakistan...
Read more at the following link...
Top Afghan Diplomat Abducted in Pakistan
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* MWCNews.net reports... More than 150 civilian labourers have been abducted in western Afghanistan after suspected Taliban fighters stopped their convoy, an army colonel and provincial governor have said...The workers were travelling on Sunday through Farah province in three buses hired by a local construction company when they were stopped at a checkpoint, the officials said..."About 156 workers who were travelling in three buses were captured by Taliban Sunday and are still being held by them," Farooq Na'emi, the army colonel, said... No group has yet claimed responsibility for the abductions...
Read the rest at the link below...
Scores 'abducted by Afghan Taliban'
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* IHT.com also has this report out today... Pakistani troops and tribesmen opened fire when two U.S. helicopters crossed into the country from Afghanistan, intelligence officials said Monday... The incident, which the officials said happened late Sunday in North Waziristan, occurred as the country struggled to respond to a suicide bombing at a luxury hotel in the capital that killed at least 53... The Pakistani Army and the U.S. military in Afghanistan said they had no information on the reported incursion, which was likely to add to tensions between Islamabad and Washington...
More on this at the following link below...
U.S. helicopters reportedly cross into Pakistan

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Two DOD service members die in Marriott hotel terrorist attack in Islamabad

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Press Release by:
CENTCOM Public Affairs

Mac Dill AFB, Fla. (Sept. 21, 2008) – Two DOD service members, assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, died from wounds received during a terrorist attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan on September 20th.

The names of the service members are being withheld pending notification of the next of kin and release by the Department of Defense.

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