NATO convoy in Kabul hit by deadly car bombing

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Explosion in Turkey's east kills 7

At least seven security personnel were killed after a powerful explosion ripped through an area close to the town center in the eastern province of Tunceli at around 6 p.m. today.

The explosion occurred as an armored military vehicle was passing through a main street in the city's Atatürk neighborhood, broadcaster CNNTürk reported. A plume of smoke could be seen from most parts of the city as the armored vehicle, the apparent target of the attack, and a civilian car caught on fire, a reporter from the Doğan News Agency told CNNTürk anchor Nevşin Mengü. The sound of the explosion could be heard from around the city, Doğan’s reporter added, attesting to the power of the blast.

Security forces arriving at the scene came into contact with suspected militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), resulting in a clash. One militant was reportedly killed in the clash.

Ambulances carried an unknown number of injured people taken to Tunceli State Hospital as firefighters tried to extinguish the blaze.

'Dersim not bowing down to PKK'

Main opposition Republican People's Party’s (CHP) Tunceli deputy Hüseyin Aygün, who was recently kidnapped and held hostage for two days by the PKK, told Şenay Yıldız in an interview on CNNTürk yesterday that the PKK was trying pressure Tunceli residents into submitting to its rule.

Aygün had previously said "the PKK is trying to destroy commercial activities in Dersim," on the microblogging site Twitter. The lawmaker said the PKK was implementing a wave of pressure on Tunceli locals after the local eloctorate elected CHP deputies and were not falling into line with the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). "Dersim is not bowing down to the PKK," he said.

Dersim is the former name of Tunceli and is still commonly used.

"The PKK's aim is to found its own state," Aygün told CNNTürk. "But the people of Dersim are showing resistance to the PKK's forced policies ... so, the PKK is now making them pay for it."

The PKK is sending out the message of "you either accept my sovereignty or leave Dersim," according to Aygün. The lawmaker said that the militant group conducted acts of punishment including exile, torching commercial vehicles, shops and businesses and extortion under the guise of taxes during the 1990s, forcing Tunceli locals out of the city. "Today, they still collect taxes from local businesses," Aygün said.

The recent assassination of a public prosecutor in Tunceli was also a part of PKK's efforts at trying to subdue the population, Aygün said. "It is pathetic to attack a defenseless man from behind, a man who is loved by Dersim locals."

The PKK is recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

VIDEO -  Hürriyet Daily News | VIDEO

2 NATO service members killed in Afghanistan

U.S. Marines greet the return of the remains of an American soldier.

The NATO military coalition in Afghanistan says two of its service members have been killed in an insurgent attack in the east of the country.

The military alliance says the attack happened on Saturday but doesn’t provide further details.

NATO also did not provide the nationalities of the dead. Most of the troops in eastern Afghanistan are American,

Saturday’s deaths bring the number of international service members killed in Afghanistan so far this month to at least 42.

July 2011 saw 52 international service members killed.

Sailor dies from injuries after IED blast

A sailor died Saturday of injuries suffered on July 7 from an improvised explosive device, the Defense Department reports.

 

 Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Michael Brodsky participates in a training exercises for dog handlers.

 Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Michael Brodsky died in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. The 33-year-old from Tamarac, Fla., was injured in a dismounted IED explosion.

Brodsky died at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, according to Navy Region Southwest spokesman Brian O’Rourke.

He had been assigned to the San Diego-based Navy Region Southwest Security Detachment since December 2010. He enlisted in the Navy in 2001 and served overseas in Sasebo, Japan, and Naval Support Facility Bahrain. He also deployed to Afghanistan as an individual augmentee, O’Rourke said.

U.S. troops find, destroy more Afghan IEDs

Almost afraid to say it out loud, lest they jinx their record, U.S. troops in Afghanistan achieved one small but important victory over the past year: They found and avoided more homemade bombs meant to kill and maim them than a year ago, thanks to a surge in training, equipment and intelligence.

Bomb-planters have picked up the pace during the summer months, planting improvised explosive devices along roads or footpaths. But the explosives are no longer the leading cause of death and injury in Afghanistan.

In the first three months of this year, only 5 percent of the bombs planted across Afghanistan hit their mark, according to Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, director of the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization. That’s down from 10 to 12 percent over the same three-month period a year ago.

The figures released to The Associated Press show a slow but steady decline, from a high of 368 deaths caused by IEDs in 2010 to 252 in 2011, according to the privately run icasualties.org, which tracks war casualties. That decrease has happened even as the military has begun to withdraw its surge of 30,000 troops, scheduled to be complete by September this year. Troops are often more vulnerable as they withdraw from an area.

Officials concede that the rate of bombs that cause casualties has risen slightly from April through June, as NATO troops attacked Taliban-held areas in a return to heavy fighting with the summer months. But the year is on track to be lower still than each of the previous three years, with 77 deaths from IEDs so far out of 162 total troops killed, halfway through 2012, according to icasualties.org.

Barbero credits the slow turnaround to three years of an increase in intelligence-gathering equipment such as towers and aircraft outfitted with an array of cameras and other detection technology that have given U.S. commanders an edge, enabling them to spot the bombers as they approach often-traveled routes or revealing the signs of freshly dug earth where the explosives have been buried.

They installed “towers and balloons that give you persistent stare” to spot the Taliban trying to bury a bomb or approach a base in a bomb-laden car at fast speed, Barbero said. “Every commander told us [they] love those, because they can see [the threat] and take action.”

Training is the second key factor — teaching the troops how to use devices such as a hand-held remote robot with a camera that they can throw over a wall, then wheel around, checking if the coast is clear and trying to see whether the area shows telltale signs of being mined with explosives. The IED organization focused last year especially on equipment to help foot patrols, because so many troops were losing limbs, Barbero said. They rushed hundreds of devices into the field that are like a window washer’s telescoping pole, repurposed with a hook on the end, to probe for hidden bombs on footpaths.

That welcome trend is tempered by the looming drawdown of troops from Afghanistan by 2014, which will spell tough choices for commanders trying to balance keeping enough combat troops on the ground to challenge the Taliban with keeping enough intelligence support teams on the ground to keep combat troops safe. Then once the troops draw down, the small numbers of special operations forces and intelligence teams left behind will have to rely on smaller numbers still manning the sensors in the sky.

That reality is already being discussed by lawmakers on the congressional committees that oversee intelligence matters and the armed services.

“We may seek to offset the drawdown by boosting intelligence assets,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Even with those assets, the troops face another headache Barbero has not been able to solve: Explosives manufactured in the tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan still pour across the border. Pakistani officials say only a fraction of 1 percent of Pakistan-made fertilizer gets turned into bombs used in Afghanistan. Barbero counters that 86 percent of IEDs in Afghanistan are made from ammonium nitrate from fertilizer made in Pakistan. In frequents trips to visit Pakistani officials, he requests that they find a way to change the fertilizer’s composition to make it hard to turn into explosives.

He’s made the same plea to the international fertilizer industry, telling a conference in Qatar this year to join in a global campaign to dye the ammonium nitrate to help track it, and to develop “a non-detonable formula.” In two years of pleading with the industry for a solution, no one has come up with one yet.