President Barack Obama says he is collecting facts about the killing of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners in November 2001, reportedly by fighters of a US-backed warlord in northern Afghanistan, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum. But rights observers say they believe US forces could have been directly involved in the mass slaying.

At least 25 were killed in Afghanistan's Logar (Lowgar) province after a truck loaded with explosives hidden under firewood skidded off the road and crashed. The payload exploded when police and crowd of civilians gathered around the vehicle to investigate. Of the dead, only four were police; 16 were schoolchildren aged 8 to 12, who had been on their way class. Authorities believe the explosives were detonated remotely. No-one has claimed responsibility. (NYT, LAT, July 9)

Some 4,000 US Marines moved into villages in Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province July 3—a remote area that is at the center of the country's opium cultivation, which helps finance the insurgency. One Marine has been killed and several others injured in the operation. A roadside bomb in Helmand also killed the UK's Lt. Col. Rupert Thorneloe, the most senior British officer to have died in combat in Afghanistan. A Canadian soldier was killed in Kandahar when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device. And in Paktia province, a roadside bomb killed three Afghans and a foreigner working on a road construction project. (Daily Times, Pakistan, July 4)

At least 10 militants were killed in another presumed US drone strike on Pakistan's tribal areas July 3. The missiles reportedly hit the hideout of Taliban commander Noor Wali in Mochikhel, South Waziristan—a district controlled by Pakistan's top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud. Noor Wali is part of Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban organisation. Mochikhel is near the key Servakai route, currently the scene of fighting between Pakistani security forces and Mehsud's militants. There have been an estimated 35 US strikes since last August, killing over 340 people. (BBC, July 3)

Pakistani jet-fighters continued to run bombing raids over North Waziristan tribal region, killing seven people on June 30, residents said. Warplanes bombed the Wacha Bibi area, west of Miramshah. A military convoy was ambushed in the locality on Sunday in which 27 soldiers were killed. The army claimed that 10 militants were killed in a counter attack.

Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported June 7 that the government is establishing a Sufi Advisory Council, with an aim of combating extremism by promoting Sufism and its pacifistic vision of Islam. Noting this development June 26, Reuters' FaithWorld blog adds that such stateside establishmentarian voices as the RAND and the Heritage Foundation have recently advocated such a strategy.

The militant cleric Sufi Mohammed, who brokered the failed Swat Valley peace deal, has been arrested and transferred to a secret "safehouse" in Peshawar, together with his wife, an unnamed official told Italy's AKI news service. The government is keeping the arrests secret until it decides what the cleric's fate will be, the source, who added: "This could be the beginning of a new round of a dialogue as the military operation so far failed to get the government any place."

At least 45 people were killed in a missile strike by a US drone aircraft in Pakistan's South Waziristan region, officials there said June 23. Those killed had been attending a funeral for others killed in a US drone strike earlier in the day. The region is a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.