Nigeria extremists say they kidnap women, children

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The leader of an Islamic extremist group in Nigeria says his group has started kidnapping women and children as part of its bloody guerrilla campaign against the country's government, according to a video released Monday.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau says the kidnappings are retaliation for Nigerian security forces routinely imprisoning the wives and children of his group's members. The video shows 12 children, a mix of boys and girls, though it does not identify them or say where they came from.

"If they do not leave our wives and children, we will not leave," Shekau says in the Hausa language of Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

Police and security forces have not announced any kidnapping cases involving Nigerians taken after Boko Haram attacks, though such abductions could be easily done in the chaos after an assault. Shekau quoted the Quran in the video and said anyone taken by the group could begin a new life as a "servant," without going into detail.

Nigerian security forces often arrest children and wives to draw out criminal suspects in other matters, human rights activists say. Security forces also have been accused of abuses in their fight against Islamic extremists.

In the video, a Kalashnikov assault rifle sits over Shekau's right shoulder as he speaks, the background covered with a rug. It's unclear when the video was shot, though Shekau claims attacks Boko Haram launched on the towns of Bama and Baga in northeastern Nigeria in recent days.

In late April, at least 187 people were killed in fighting in Baga, a town in Borno state that sits along the banks of Lake Chad. Witnesses say soldiers angry about the death of a military officer set fire to homes there and killed civilians. Human Rights Watch recently said an analysis of satellite imagery before and after the attack led them to believe the violence destroyed some 2,275 buildings and severely damaged another 125.

Nigeria's military has blamed the blazes on rocket-propelled grenades fired by extremist and denied killing civilians, despite growing criticism and evidence showing mass civilian casualties.

Boko Haram leader Shekau said in the video that his fighters only launched a "small" attack there at night and had nothing to do with the civilian killings.

"The next morning security forces, they entered there, they burned down house," Shekau says. "They killed that they wanted to kill and in the end, they came and said it was Boko Haram. It's a lie."

Boko Haram's attacks have been increasing in number and sophistication since 2010. Attacks blamed on the group and other Islamic extremists have killed at least 244 this year alone, according to an Associated Press count.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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2 children die in Kenya landslide; 41 flood deaths

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya's Red Cross says two children buried in a landslide overnight have died, as the country's death toll from heavy flooding rose to 41.

The Red Cross said Wednesday that the landslide in Narok County happened after a heavy downpour that destroyed houses and farms. The two children were buried alive while sleeping.

A search and rescue mission to find the children was hampered by impassable roads. The bodies were recovered in the afternoon.

Kenya's annual long rains have brought heavy flooding around the country, displacing thousands of people. The Red Cross says 41 people have died from floods in recent days.

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Cuba to turn over Florida couple and children

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba says it will turn over to the United States a Florida couple who allegedly kidnapped their own children from the mother's parents and fled by boat to Havana.

Foreign Ministry official Johana Tablada told The Associated Press in a written statement Tuesday that Cuba had informed U.S. authorities of the country's decision to turn over Joshua Michael Hakken, his wife Sharyn and their two young boys. She did not say when the handover would occur.

The Hakkens were spotted alongside their boat, Salty, docked at Havana's Hemingway Marina. Joshua Michael Hakken told reporters to stay away but the family appeared to be interacting normally with each other.

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Afghan government says airstrike kills 11 children

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A fierce battle between U.S.-backed Afghan forces and Taliban militants in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan left nearly 20 people dead, including 11 Afghan children killed in an airstrike and an American civilian adviser, officials said Sunday.

The fighting along a main infiltration route from Pakistan on Saturday was indicative of a surge in hostilities as Afghanistan's spring fighting season gets underway. This year's will be closely watched because Afghan forces are having to contend with less support from the international military coalition, making it a test case of their ability to take on the country's resilient insurgency.

The U.S.-led coalition confirmed that it launched airstrikes in Kunar province where the deaths occurred, stressing that they were requested by international forces. The coalition said it was assessing the incident, but could not confirm that civilians were killed.

The battle unfolded on Saturday, the same day that a total of six Americans, including three U.S. soldiers, died in violent attacks. In addition to the U.S. adviser killed during the operation in the east, two others — a female foreign service officer with the U.S. State Department and an employee with the U.S. Defense Department — died in a suicide bombing in southern Zabul province during a trip to donate books to Afghan students.

The deaths capped one of the bloodiest weeks of the nearly 12-year-old war. On Wednesday, insurgents ambushed a courthouse in the relatively safe west, killing more than 46 people.

The death of Afghan civilians caught in the crossfire has been a major point of contention between international forces and the Afghan government. Earlier this year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai banned his troops from requesting coalition airstrikes.

In the latest incident, Associated Press photos showed villagers gathered for the funerals of the children whose bodies were swaddled in blankets. A garland of flowers adorned the head of a dead baby.

Afghan officials said the airstrike occurred after a joint U.S.-Afghan force faced hours of heavy gunfire from militants. The joint force was conducting an operation targeting a senior Taliban leader that began around midnight Friday in the Shultan area of Kunar's Shigal district, according to tribal elder Gul Pasha, who also is the chief of the local council.

The remote area is one of the main points of entry for Taliban and other insurgents trying to move across the mountainous border from neighboring Pakistan, where they enjoy refuge in the lawless northwestern area.

"In the morning after sunrise, planes appeared in the sky and airstrikes started," Pasha said in a telephone interview, adding that the fighting didn't end until the evening.

"I don't think that they knew that all these children and women were in the house because they were under attack from the house and they were shooting at the house," he said.

There were slightly differing accounts of the death toll.

Pasha said the main Taliban suspect was in the house that was hit and was killed along with a woman and the children, ages 1 to 12, who were members of the suspect's family.

Provincial government spokesman Wasifullah Wasify said 10 children and one woman were killed and five women, who also were in the house, were wounded.

Karzai's office later said 11 people were killed — all of them children — and six women were wounded.

"While the president strongly condemns the Taliban act of using people and their houses as shields, he also strongly condemns any operation on populated areas that results in civilian casualties," his office said in a statement.

An airstrike in the same district in Kunar that killed 10 civilians in mid-February prompted Karzai to ban his forces from requesting airstrikes.

Afghanistan's Interior Ministry said six Taliban militants were killed in the operation in Sano Dara Sheltan village, including two senior commanders identified as Ali Khan and Gul Raof, the main planner and organizer of attacks in the area.

The U.S.-led coalition said it provided fire support from the air, killing several insurgents.

"The air support was called in by coalition forces, not Afghan security forces, and was used to engage insurgent forces in areas away from structures, according to our reporting," coalition spokesman Maj. Adam Wojack said in a statement.

He said the coalition takes all reports of civilian casualties seriously, and was currently assessing the incident.

Afghan forces have been increasingly taking the lead in combat operations as international forces move to complete their withdrawal by the end of 2014. But U.S. and other foreign troops still face dangers as they try to clear areas of insurgents and prepare the Afghans to take control.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer, told the AP in an interview on Sunday in Afghanistan that he was cautiously optimistic about the final stage of handing off security responsibility to Afghan forces.

Asked if he thought that some parts of Afghanistan will be contested by the Taliban in 2015, Dempsey replied, "Yes, of course there will be. And if we were having this conversation 10 years from now, I suspect there would (still) be contested areas because the history of Afghanistan suggests that there will always be contested areas."

There are about 100,000 international troops currently in Afghanistan, including 66,000 from the United States. The U.S. troop total is scheduled to drop to about 32,000 by early next year. The bulk of the decline is to occur after fighting winds down this winter.

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AP writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Rahmat Gul in Jalalabad and Robert Burns at Bagram Air Field contributed.

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