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Eyewitness video reveals fight to retake Kunduz

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A day after a strategic northern city fell to the Taliban, the insurgents fanned out in full force Tuesday, closing roads, throwing up checkpoints and torching government buildings as fearful residents huddled indoors amid signs a promised Afghan counteroffensive was faltering.

U.S. warplanes carried out two airstrikes on Taliban positions, but government ground troops sent to try to retake Kunduz, one of Afghanistan's wealthiest cities, were stalled by roadblocks and ambushes, unable to move closer than about a mile (two kilometers) toward their target.

A NATO officer said more airstrikes were unlikely as "all the Taliban are inside the city and so are all the people." He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media on the issue.

His words suggested the fight to retake the city would involve painstaking street-by-street fighting as government forces try to avoid civilian casualties in retaking control.

Inside the city, residents were stunned by the audacity of the insurgents, who attacked Kunduz on a number of fronts before dawn on Monday, taking the government, intelligence agency and military by surprise.

The insurgents used mosque loudspeakers to try to reassure people they were safe. But residents, recalling the group's brutality during its 1996-2001 rule of Afghanistan, were fearful of what was to come.

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Map locates Kunduz, Afghanistan.

"Kunduz is a ghost city now, fear has locked people inside their homes," said Folad Hamdad, a local freelance journalist who escaped late Monday to neighboring Takhar province.

He said Taliban gunmen were going door to door "searching for government officials, local police commanders, anyone they can think of. No one is safe."

The fall of the city of 300,000 inhabitants — the first urban area taken by the Taliban since the U.S. invasion ousted their regime 14 years ago — is a major setback to President Ashraf Ghani, who has staked his presidency on bringing peace to Afghanistan and seeking to draw the Taliban to peace talks.

In a televised address, he vowed to take Kunduz back from the insurgents, urging the nation to trust Afghan troops to do the job.

"The enemy has sustained heavy casualties," he said. "The enemy's main objective was to create fear and terror."

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A Taliban fighter sits on his motorcycle adorned with a Taliban flag in a street in Kunduz, Afghanis …

U.S. warplanes carried out two airstrikes, one early Tuesday morning and another just before midnight near the Kunduz airport to eliminate a threat to the force, said Col. Brian Tribus, spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Acting Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai said Taliban fighters had infiltrated the city during the recent Eid holiday, the biggest of the year when millions of Afghans move around the country to spend time with family.

The insurgents were reinforced by militants who came from neighboring Pakistan after being driven out by a military offensive, as well as from China and Central Asia, Stanekzai said.

Monday's fierce multipronged assault took the Afghan military and intelligence agencies off guard after what had appeared to be a stalemate throughout the summer between Taliban forces besieging the city and government troops defending it.

"None of the security forces or officials had any information about the attack; if they had they would have warned the NGOs, the U.N. and the banks, but they didn't," said one Kunduz resident, a banker who escaped the city late Monday and spoke to The Associated Press in Kabul.

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Taliban fighters pose for a photo next to a UN vehicle which they are using, in Kunduz, Afghanistan, …

"Yesterday it was possible for people to get out of the city, but today it is too late because all roads are under the Taliban control," said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

He said that amid the confusion of the attack, government officials and their bodyguards fled to the airport in an attempt to flee. Kunduz Gov. Omer Safi was out of the country for the Eid holiday, and his current whereabouts were unknown.

Kunduz and the surrounding province, also called Kunduz, have a total population of around 1 million. The region is one of the country's chief bread baskets and has rich mining assets. It lies on a strategic crossroads connecting Afghanistan to Pakistan, China and Central Asia.

The insurgents have had a heavy presence in the province since launching their annual summer offensive with an assault on the city in April. That marked the start of a campaign across the north, with attacks reported in recent days in neighboring Takhar province. Officials say the Taliban have allied with other insurgent groups to boost numbers and fire power. The region's natural resources, as well as proximity to smuggling routes into Central Asia for drugs, minerals and weapons make it an attractive prize for the insurgents.

Afghan security forces have been sorely tested by the fighting, following the withdrawal late last year of international combat troops. Army and police have suffered huge casualties and their resources have been spread thinly across the country as the Taliban have taken their fight to topple the Kabul government to every corner of Afghanistan.

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Taliban fighters drive a vehicle belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kunduz …

The United Nations evacuated international staff from Kunduz about five hours after the attack began at 3 a.m. Monday. Other non-government organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross, also evacuated some international staff, and photographs from the city showed gunmen riding around in U.N. and ICRC vehicles.

The number of dead and wounded in the fighting was unclear as overwhelmed health workers struggled to treat the injured and verify how many had died.

"We fear that many more civilians may be harmed if fighting continues over the next few days," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, adding that the U.N. was "seeking to verify reports that at least 110 civilians were killed and injured."

He urged all parties to the conflict to take "all measures to protect civilians from harm."

Public Health Ministry spokesman Wahidullah Mayar said on his Twitter account that Kunduz hospitals had received "172 wounded patients and 16 dead bodies so far."

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A Taliban supporter removes leaders' pictures in the main square of Kunduz, north of Kabul, Afgh …

Doctors Without Borders said its "overwhelmed" trauma center in Kunduz treated 171 wounded since early Monday morning, including 46 children. Earlier, Kate Stegeman, the aid group's communications director, said nine patients had died.

Security analyst Ali Mohammad Ali described the Taliban takeover of the city as "a shock but not a surprise, because every province in Afghanistan is as fragile as Kunduz."

With the capture of Kunduz, the Taliban have achieved a "huge political and propaganda victory," he said.

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Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show that NATO combat forces pulled out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014, not 2015.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad welcomed Wednesday's decision by Russia to send troops to his war-torn country, saying the military support from Moscow is the result of a Damascus request.

The development came as Russian military jets carried out airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday for the first time. A U.S. defense official told The Associated Press that the airstrikes took place near Homs — Syria's largest provinces that borders Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

Russian lawmakers earlier Wednesday voted unanimously to let President Vladimir Putin send Russian troops to Syria. The Kremlin, however, sought to play down the decision, saying it will only use its air force in the Mideast country, not ground troops.

According to a statement by Assad's office, the Syrian leader had sent a letter to his Russian counterpart, asking for the support. Assad's Facebook page also reiterated that it "came upon a request from the Syrian state."

Russia has been one of Assad's strongest allies since the Syrian crisis began in March 2011. The civil war has killed more than 250,000 people and wounded a million, according to U.N. figures.

On the ground, Syrian activists said that air raids on the central provinces of Homs and Hama killed and wounded dozens of people on Wednesday.

An activist group known as the Local Coordination Committees claimed that the warplanes that carried out the air raids were Russian. It cited residents in the areas bombed as saying the explosions were much more powerful and accurate than those carried out by government warplanes.

However, Rami Abdurrahman, who heads another activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the air raids were carried out by government warplanes which Damascus had recently received from Moscow. He said the new warplanes were Russian-made Sukhoi and MiGs.

Abdurrahman added that he expects Russia will target militants from the former Soviet Union — whether they belong to the Islamic State group or al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front.

The areas that were hit in the airstrikes in central Syria are not under the control the of the Islamic State group.

The LCC said dozens of people were killed and wounded in the air raids on Homs while the Observatory said 27, including six children, were died. The Observatory said towns of Rastan, Talbiseh and Zaafaraneh were hit.

After the air raids, rebels shelled government-held neighborhoods in the city of Homs, killing at least one person and wounding seven, according to governor Talal Barrazi.

In Iraq, a spokesman for Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadai said officials in Baghdad are in talks with the Russians about cooperation in the hope that shared intelligence "will further our abilities to defeat the terrorists that are within our borders."

"We are focused on the situation in Iraq but we have no influence over the situation in Syria or over what takes place in Syria," said Saad al-Hadithi. "The situation in Syria has had a major impact on Iraq."

In Pakistan, analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said the Russian parliament's move was aimed at endorsing Putin's policies, adding that the Russian president seeks to protect Assad, his ally.

"The Russian parliament has endorsed what Putin has already been doing. But today's move makes him stronger," said Rizvi. "You will be seeing additional Russian troops on ground in Syria very soon."

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Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Vivian Salama in Baghdad and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

By Andrew Osborn and Phil Stewart

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia launched air strikes against targets in Syria on Wednesday in the Kremlin's biggest intervention in the Middle East in decades, telling the U.S. air force to steer clear while its warplanes were in action.

Moscow's assertion that it had attacked Islamic State was immediately challenged by Washington and by rebel sources in Syria.

A U.S. official said Moscow gave Washington just an hour's notice of the strikes, which the Kremlin said were designed to help President Bashar al-Assad, its closest regional ally, push back Islamist militants.

Notice of the attack came from a Russian official in Baghdad who asked the U.S. air force to avoid Syrian airspace during the mission, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

Russia and the United States offered conflicting accounts of which targets had been struck, underlining growing tensions between the two former Cold War foes over Moscow's decision to intervene.

U.S. officials said targets in the Homs area appeared to have been struck, but not areas held by Islamic State.

Areas of the province of Homs struck by the Russians are controlled by an array of rebel groups including several operating under the banner of the "Free Syrian Army", activists, locals and rebels said. None of the sources named Islamic State as one of the groups operating in the areas hit on Wednesday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said however that its attacks were directed at Islamic State military targets. It said it had hit IS weapons depots, ammunition, communications infrastructure, and fuel.

The head of the Western-backed Syrian political opposition said the Russian strikes had killed at least 36 civilians and targeted areas where Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked fighters were not present.

According to a pro-Syrian government military source, there were "five strikes against five areas in Syria’s Homs”. He said other areas may have been bombed too.

The Homs area is crucial to Assad's control of western Syria. Insurgent control of that area would bisect the Assad-held west, separating Damascus from the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous, where Russia operates a naval facility.

Striking Homs and opposition groups but not IS showed the Kremlin's primary aim was to prop up Assad, a French diplomatic source said.

Moscow’s intervention means the conflict in Syria has been transformed in a few months from a proxy war, in which outside powers were arming and training mostly Syrians to fight each other, to an international conflict in which the world’s main military powers except China are directly involved in fighting.

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Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a news conference at the United Nations General …

That raises the risks of military accidents between outside powers and raises pressure for a diplomatic solution, without making it any easier.

Russia joined the United States and its Arab allies, Turkey, France, Iran and Israel in direct intervention, with Britain expected to join soon, if it gets parliamentary approval.

PARLIAMENTARY VOTE

Russian jets went into action after the upper house of the Russian parliament gave President Vladimir Putin unanimous backing for strikes following a request for military assistance from Assad.

In a barely concealed jibe at Washington, a spokesman for Putin later said the vote meant Moscow would be practically the only country in Syria to be conducting operations "on a legitimate basis" and at the request of "the legitimate president of Syria".

The last time the Russian parliament granted Putin the right to use military force abroad, a technical requirement under Russian law, Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine last year.

Speaking after the strikes, Putin said the only way to fight "terrorists" in Syria was to act preemptively. Russia's military involvement in the Middle East would only involve its air force and be temporary, he said.

One of the reasons for getting involved was the need to stop Russian citizens who had joined the ranks of Islamic State from later returning home to cause trouble, said Putin.

The Russian leader said he still thought the ultimate solution to Syria's problems was political.

"A definitive and long-term solution in Syria is only possible on the basis of political reform and on the basis of dialogue between moderate forces in the country," he said.

"I know that President Assad understands that and is ready for such a process. We are counting on his active and flexible position and on his readiness to compromise."

A U.S.-led coalition has already been bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But Putin derided U.S. efforts on Monday in a speech at the United Nations, suggesting a broader and more coordinated coalition was needed to defeat the militants.

MILITARY BUILD-UP

"The military aim of our operations will be exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in their struggle against ISIS (Islamic State)," Sergei Ivanov, the Kremlin's Chief-of-Staff, said before reports that the strikes had begun.

Russia has been steadily dispatching more and more military aircraft to a base in Latakia, regarded as an Assad stronghold, after the Syrian government suffered a series of battlefield reverses.

Moscow has already sent military experts to a recently established command center in Baghdad which is coordinating air strikes and ground troops in Syria, a Russian official told Reuters.

Russia's involvement in Syria will be a further challenge for Moscow, which is already intervening in Ukraine at a time when its own economy is suffering from low oil prices and Western sanctions.

Opinion polls also show Russian voters have little appetite for a long campaign, with painful memories of the Soviet Union's 1979-89 intervention in Afghanistan, in which thousands of Soviet troops were killed, still fresh.

But as Russian real incomes fall for the first time since Putin came to power, the spectacle of the country flexing its military muscles overseas, could also be a useful distraction for the Kremlin.

Ivanov said Russia was only acting to protect its own interests in Syria, where it maintains a Soviet-era naval facility at Tartous, its only access to the Mediterranean.

"We're talking specifically about Syria and we are not talking about achieving foreign policy goals or about satisfying our ambitions ... but exclusively about the national interests of the Russian Federation," said Ivanov.

Ivanov declined to say which aircraft the Russian air force was deploying.

"The operations of the Russian air force can not of course go on indefinitely and will be subject to clearly prescribed time frames," he said.

Russia's decision to intervene in Syria was prompted by a panicky realization that the Syrian government was being turned over on the battlefield, diplomats and analysts have told Reuters.

When it saw several months ago that Syrian government forces were retreating on several fronts at a rate that threatened Assad, its closest Middle East ally, the Kremlin quietly decided to despatch more men, weaponry and armor.

(Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly, Daria Korsunskaya, Alexander Winning, Gabriela Baczynska, Vladimir Soldatkin, Maria Tsvetkova and Tom Perry and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Sylvia Westall, Jean-Baptiste Vey in Paris, Will Dunham in Washington; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Tehran (AFP) - The Iranian foreign minister's reported handshake with US President Barack Obama triggered chants of "Death to America" in Tehran's parliament Wednesday and a warning against "another kind of spying".

The foreign ministry has confirmed a "completely accidental" encounter between Obama and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, without denying there was a handshake as reported by Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency.

But hardline lawmakers went on the offensive against Zarif.

"With whose permission have they met Obama?" deputy Bahram Biranvand asked angrily. "Last time they talked to Obama on the phone and this time, with whose permission" did Iran's minister shake hands with the US leader?

Biranvand was referring to President Hassan Rouhani's historic telephone call with his American counterpart in 2013.

Zarif also came under indirect attack from Iran's ultraconservative judiciary spokesman, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie, Fars news agency reported.

Without naming Zarif, Ejeie alluded to the Obama handshake and said: "Some spies are paid but there is another kind of spying that we have to watch out for. He prepares the ground for the enemy.

"These people would say: 'Why not allow a friendly handshake with the enemy? What's wrong with shaking hands with Obama? What's wrong with sitting with them, chatting away and drinking with them?'"

Despite the July 14 nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers led by the United States, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Washington remains Tehran's "number one enemy".

The Obama-Zarif handshake would be the first known between a US president and a top Iranian official since the two countries severed diplomatic ties in the wake of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.