4 US-led soldiers injured in eastern Afghanistan
Added Date: 9/10/2012 12:08:09 PM
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Four NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers were injured following a roadside bombing in the eastern province of Laghman, an official said on Monday. 

At least four US-led soldiers have been injured following the explosion of a tank in eastern Afghanistan.

The high number of military casualties in Afghanistan has intensified opposition in the United States and other members of the Western military alliance of NATO against the protracted war in the Asian country

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 with on the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Meanwhile the US military has handed control of a controversial prison housing more than 3,000 Taliban fighters to the Afghan authorities.

In a small ceremony, Afghan officials said inmates had been transferred to their authority.

The move is part of a deal to transfer all Afghan prisons back to local control ahead of the withdrawal of Nato forces at the end of 2014.

Bagram prison has been at the centre of a number of prisoner abuse allegations.

Washington is insisting that it will maintain control over some detainees in the prison.

'Afghanistan's Guantanamo'

The handover took place in a brief ceremony which correspondents say was poorly attended by US and Nato officers.

Bagram prison now officially known as the Parwan Detention Centre, Bagram prison lies about 40km (25 miles) north of the capital, Kabul.

It was once located in one of the largest military bases for Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, but the new Parwan facility was constructed a few miles away and populated with inmates in 2010.

More than 3,000 inmates are held there, including about 50 foreigners not covered by the handover agreement signed in March.

The US military still wants to run a section of the jail and is not handing over some detainees, saying it has the right to hold insurgents caught on the battlefield, the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Kabul reports.

Meanwhile the director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, Hekmat Karzai, told the BBC the Americans believe they have a strategic interest in keeping these detainees.

"The argument is that while they have troops on the ground it's very difficult to release these people," said Hekmat Karzai.

Bagram has been described as "Afghanistan's Guantanamo" for its troubled past of prisoner abuse and indefinite detention.

In April 2010, a BBC investigation uncovered allegations of prisoner abuse at a hidden facility at Bagram.

In January 2012, Afghan investigators accused the US Army of abusing detainees at Bagram.

The investigators said prisoners had reported being tortured, held without evidence and subjected to humiliating body searches.

The following month, US soldiers burned Korans at Bagram, leading to days of protests and targeted killings across Afghanistan..

 

Source: BBC & Agencies

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