Report: Russia offered bounty to Taliban to attack US troops
WASHINGTON: US intelligence has concluded that the Russian military had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops and other coalition forces, the New York Times reported, citing officials briefed on the matter.
But the Taliban and Russia refuted the report, while the White House denied on Saturday that President Donald Trump had been briefed by intelligence on the bounty.
The rewards purportedly gave incentives to the guerrillas to target US forces, just as Trump tries to withdraw troops - meeting one of the militants’ key demands - and end America’s longest war.
Citing anonymous officials, the newspaper reported on Friday that Trump was briefed on the findings in March, but has not decided how to respond.
Press secretary Kayleigh
Mcenany said “neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence”.
But she added: “This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of The New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter.”
That left open the possibility such intelligence does exist.
The Taliban denied the report, reiterating that it was committed to an accord signed with Washington in February that paves the way for withdrawing all foreign forces from Afghanistan by next year.
The militants also said homemade explosives account for most fatalities among US forces.
“The 19-year jihad of the Islamic Emirate is not indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country,” the Taliban said in a statement issued in Kabul.
The group, widely believed to have received years of support from Pakistani intelligence, also denied previous US accusations it was given arms by Russia.
“The Islamic Emirate has made use of weapons, facilities and tools ... that were already present in Afghanistan or are war spoils frequently seized from the opposition in battles,” it said.
Russia has also denounced the report, with its embassy in Washington tweeting that the “baseless and anonymous accusations” in The Times story had “already led to direct threats to the life of employees” at its embassies in Washington and London.
“Stop producing #fakenews t hat provoke life t hreats, @nytimes,” it added in a later tweet.
Russia has a tortured history in Afghanistan, where the former Soviet Union in its final years was bogged down in a devastating fight against Islamist guerrillas
CHICAGO: A one-year-old boy was killed and his mother wounded in a Chicago drive-by shooting that has stunned authorities accustomed to rampant gun violence in America’s third-largest city.
The 22-year-old mother was driving home on Saturday afternoon when the attacker pulled up next to her car and fired around eight shots, striking the infant in the chest and grazing her head, police said. “This is happening far too often,” Chicago police operations chief Fred Waller told reporters near where the shooting took place in the city’s south. “When is this going to stop? When are we gonna say enough is enough?”
Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot and police superintendent David Brown asked the city’s residents to speak up if they had information on Saturday’s attack.
“We ALL need to be outraged by the violence we are seeing in our city. This baby, and all of our residents, deserve better,” Brown said.
ONE SHOT DEAD NEAR BLM PROTEST SITE
One person died and another was injured in a shooting late on Saturday in Louisville, Kentucky’s Jefferson Square Park, which has become a centre for protests against the police killing of a Black woman in her home in March.
Reports of the shooting at the park came at 9pm local time, according to the Louisville Metro Police Department.
“Calls then came in that Sheriff’s department personnel were in the park performing life-saving measures on a male who eventually died at the scene”, the police said in a statement.
The statement said the police had cleared the park and homicide detectives were conducting an investigation.