Insurgency

WASHINGTON - They wake before dawn, with time to exercise, eat and pray before the day's first class in firing Kalashnikov rifles. Over the next eight hours, they practice using bazookas or laying roadside bombs, with a break for lunch and mandatory religious instruction. There is free time in the evening to watch television or play pingpong. Lights out at 11 p.m. Such is a typical day at a dusty military base outside Tehran, Iran, where for the past several years members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah operatives have trained Iraqi Shiites to launch attacks against American forces in Iraq, according to accounts given to American interrogators by captured Iraqi fighters.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban fighters made an unusual bid to capture a provincial capital, Afghan and Western officials said yesterday, a failed assault that underscored their heightened boldness in recent months. Hundreds of Taliban militants took part in the multipronged attack that began late Saturday against Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where British troops maintain a regional garrison. NATO-led forces carried out airstrikes to stave off the assault, which left more than 60 insurgents dead in fighting that continued into early yesterday, according to Afghan and Western military officials.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - In what could herald as an intensified American campaign against Islamic insurgents in Pakistan's tribal areas, a suspected U.S. missile attack killed at least nine people near the Afghan border, local officials said yesterday. It was not immediately known whether any senior insurgent figures were among the dead, but officials in the South Waziristan tribal agency said those killed included "foreigners" - often used to mean al-Qaida operatives and commanders from outside Pakistan.

WASHINGTON - In a decision reflecting the shortage of available combat troops, more than 2,000 Marines fighting the Taliban will be kept in Afghanistan 30 days beyond their original seven-month tour, the Marine Corps said yesterday. The decision by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to extend the Marines' tour was confirmed a day after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more troops are needed in Afghanistan but that he didn't have more troops to send. Gates had said several times in recent months that he had "no plans" to extend the Marines' tour.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Explosions echoed through vineyards and pomegranate groves yesterday as Afghan and NATO forces backed by helicopter gunships recaptured at least four villages in southern Afghanistan that had been seized by the Taliban, Afghan authorities said. At least three dozen insurgents, including a commander, and two Afghan soldiers were killed in the Arghandab district northwest of Kandahar, Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said. By day's end, the insurgents were still in control of a half-dozen villages.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Thousands of frightened villagers fled a district in southern Afghanistan that was overrun by Taliban fighters, as NATO and Afghan forces flew in hundreds of reinforcements yesterday to confront the insurgents. About 700 Afghan troops were airlifted to the main coalition base outside Kandahar after Taliban fighters moved into nearly a dozen villages in the strategic Arghandab district, a fertile swath of land 10 miles northwest of Kandahar. Canadian troops, who have the primary responsibility for securing Kandahar and its environs, were also repositioning themselves in response to the developments, said NATO spokesman Mark Laity.

After more than five years of tough, frustrating and costly effort, and the loss of many American and Iraqi lives, violence across Iraq has declined to levels not seen since 2004. In recent months, the Iraqi parliament has passed key legislation, and cease-fires were brokered in the strategic port city of Basra and in Baghdad's restive Shiite enclave of Sadr City. Amid of these promising developments, Americans should not presume Iraq is a lost cause, but wonder if we are seeing hopeful signs of historic change.

GARMSIR, Afghanistan -- More than a thousand Marines, backed by artillery and helicopter gunships, stormed into this Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan before dawn yesterday. The operation, mounted by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, opens a new American combat sweep across the region where the Taliban, ousted from power in 2001, have made a strong comeback. As of last night, there were no reported Marine casualties. The assault was launched in stages from a base near Kandahar, where the Sept.

BAGHDAD -- A suicide bomber walked into a funeral for two cousins who had died fighting insurgents and blew himself up yesterday, killing at least 50 people, officials said. It was the most recent strike in an internal war among Sunni Arabs, some of whom have aligned themselves with the United States and others with al-Qaida in Iraq. "The gangsters threatened us not to make the funeral," Khalaf Farhan, wounded in the blast, recalled from his hospital bed. "They said if we hold the funeral they will kill more of us, from our tribe."

BAIJI, Iraq -- The Baiji refinery may be the most important industrial site in the Sunni Arab-dominated regions of Iraq. On a good day, 500 tanker trucks will leave the refinery filled with fuel with a street value of $10 million. The sea of oil under Iraq is supposed to rebuild the nation and then make it prosper. But at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq's largest refinery is diverted to the black market, according to U.S. military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated - and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.