Military, Nato | featured news

The U.S. will send two batteries of Patriot missiles and 400 troops to Turkey as part of a NATO force meant to protect Turkish territory from potential Syrian missile attack, the Pentagon said Friday.

A NATO official says the military alliance has approved plans to send Patriot anti-missile systems to southern Turkey to bolster its defense against strikes from neighboring Syria....

Thousands gathered outside the American Consulate in Karachi on Sunday to protest against a NATO cross-border air attack that killed 24 Pakistani troops.

A NATO helicopter crashed during an operation against the Taliban near the Afghan capital late Friday night, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said 31 U.S. troops and seven Afghan soldiers were killed.
A second coalition helicopter was forced to make a precautionary landing in another part of Afghanistan, local officials and a spokesman for the multinational forces said Saturday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a sharp parting shot at European allies on Friday, saying NATO risks "collective military irrelevance" unless they bear more of the burden and boost military spending.

NATO used attack helicopters for the first time Saturday as part of its military operation aimed at increasing pressure on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

Afghan officials said Sunday that a NATO airstrike killed 14 civilians, all of them women and children, in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday night. Local officials said the strike was aimed at Taliban fighters and missed. NATO said it was investigating.

The attack on the boys amounted to one of the worst cases of mistaken killings of children by foreign-led forces in the Afghanistan war.

NATO is ready to begin turning security over to Afghan forces next year, U.S. leaders said on Friday, as the first step in a plan to withdraw almost all foreign troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

The military handover from NATO-led forces to Afghans could run past an end-2014 target date in some areas because of lingering security problems, a senior NATO official in Afghanistan said on Wednesday.