Updated 12:55 a.m. ET:  Israeli troops were moving toward the Gaza Strip border, heightening Palestinian fears about a possible ground invasion, NBC News' Martin Fletcher reported late Thursday.

Some 30,000 reservists were also ordered to report for duty by the Israel's defense minister as the region's military showdown lurched closer to all-out war.

"There is a great sense of anxiety and tension in the air here," NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reported from Tel Aviv. "People are very much worried about the ongoing operation. There's no doubt from the perspective of the Palestinians this could possibly escalate even further."

There will be momentary peace, however, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said military would stop offensive action in Gaza during a three-hour Friday visit by Hesham Kandil, Egypt's prime minister. An Israeli official said Netanyahu was acting on an Egyptian request, Reuters reported.

Kandil's visit would be an unprecedented display of solidarity with Hamas militants embroiled in a new escalation of conflict with Israel.

In another sign of the growing fear of danger in Gaza, many humanitarian aid workers have evacuated, NBC News reported.

---

In the latest air strikes, three people were killed when a missile hit their car in the northern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military also said it had carried out aerial attacks and had destroyed 70 unmanned missile launch sites. Eighteen Palestinians have been killed and 100 injured in Gaza since Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Earlier, three Israeli civilians were killed and six injured on Thursday as rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, including a long-range missile that struck a suburb eight miles south of Tel Aviv.

The long-range missile, which landed in an open area outside Rishon Lezion, causing no injuries or damage, was thought to be the first of its kind launched from Gaza. Air raid sirens were later sounded in Tel Aviv, at about 6.30 p.m. local time (11:30 a.m. ET), NBC News reported.

The Tel Aviv metropolitan area has more than 3 million people, more than 40 percent of Israel's population.

"This escalation will exact a price that the other side will have to pay," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a television broadcast shortly after the strike. 

Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, did not rule out a ground operation in Gaza in an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell on Thursday.

"Nobody wants a ground operation, and we are going to try to avoid that," Oren said, "But, again, we're going to have to take all necessary means to defend our citizens against this flagrant aggression. "

The funeral was held Thursday for Ahmed Jabari, the senior Hamas military commander, who was one of those killed in the Israeli Defense Force airstrikes.

The IDF said on its website that the three people killed were civilians in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi.

It added that 43 of the rockets from Gaza had been intercepted by its defense systems, and that it had targeted 156 "terror sites" in Gaza since the start of what it called "Operation Pillar of Defense."

"In the past 24 hours, 245 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel," it said.

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on Thursday condemned the killing of Jabari.

"Men and women in Palestine, we will continue the resistance," Meshaal said at a meeting of Islamic leaders in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting late on Wednesday to discuss the Israeli assault. It called for a halt to the violence, but took no action.

Analysis: Israel, Gaza slide closer to war neither side wants

The Palestinian Authority renewed its call Thursday for the Security Council to stop attacks. (Hamas controls Gaza, not the Palestinian Authority.)  

Egypt officially requested on Thursday a full meeting of the Security Council to discuss what it described as Israeli aggression, and withdrew its ambassador from Israel.

Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi said in a televised address to the nation Thursday that Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip were "unacceptable" and would lead to instability in the region.

Morsi said he had discussed "ways to reach calm and end the aggression" in a telephone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama.

Hamas is affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood which now controls Egypt, Israel's most powerful Arab neighbor and a crucial partner in the 1979 peace treaty that stands between fragile stability and regional chaos. The Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday called for all ties with Israel to be severed.

PhotoBlog: Deadly day along Israeli-Gaza border, after Israel kills Hamas military chief

Hamas has been emboldened by the Islamist rise to power in Egypt, viewing Morsi as a "safety net" who will not permit a second Israeli thrashing of Gaza, home to 1.7 million Palestinians. 

Expecting days or more of fighting, Israel warned Hamas that all its men were in its sights and dropped leaflets in Gaza telling residents to keep their distance from militants and Hamas facilities.

"The leaflets stress that Hamas is dragging the region toward violence, and that the IDF is prepared to defend the residents of the State of Israel until quiet is restored to the region," the military said in a statement.

Israel also warned its own citizens to stay off the streets. 

Israel kills Hamas military chief, 7 others in airstrike, officials say

The United States condemned Hamas, shunned by the West as an obstacle to peace, for its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel. 

The U.S. State Department on Thursday called for a de-escalation of the violence in the Middle East and placed the onus for that violence squarely on Hamas.

"There's one clear way to mitigate the tensions,” spokesperson Mark Toner said. “That is for Hamas to stop its rocket attacks on Israel so we can de-escalate the situation and end the violence. That's the clearest path." 

Israel says it has already destroyed much of Gaza's longer-range rocket stockpiles. Reuters reported that Hamas had claimed it had fired a 1.1 ton, Iranian-made Fajr 5 rocket at Tel Aviv, but there was no reported impact in the Israeli city.

Few in the Palestinian territory's largest urban area, Gaza City, came out following the call for dawn prayers on Thursday, and the only vehicles plying the streets were ambulances and media cars. 

About 400 angry mourners braved the streets, however, to bury Jabari, whose body was draped in the green flag of the Islamic militant Hamas movement. Some fired guns in the air and chanted, "God is Great, the revenge is coming."

When the body was brought into a mosque for funeral prayers, some tried to touch or kiss it. Others cried. BBC producer Paul Danahar posted pictures of the scene outside the mosque on Twitter.

President Barack Obama also spoke to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Morsi on the telephone late Wednesday.

A White House spokesman said Obama reiterated to both leaders the United States' support for Israel's right to self-defense, and agreed with Morsi on the importance of working to de-escalate the situation.

Reuters, The Associated Press, NBC News' Martin Fletcher, Ayman Mohyeldin, Catherine Chomiak and Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

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Updated at 4:43 p.m. ET: BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A huge car bomb explosion in Beirut on Friday killed a top Lebanese security official whose investigations implicated Syria and Hezbollah in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri seven years ago.

The rush-hour bomb in the center of the Lebanese capital killed eight people and wounded about 80 others, heightening fears that Syria's war is spilling over into Lebanon.

Among the dead was Wissam al-Hassan, the head of a Lebanese intelligence agency who had also uncovered a recent bomb plot that led to the arrest of a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician, a Lebanese official said.

Al-Hassan was a close aide to Hariri, a Sunni Muslim who was killed in a 2005 bomb attack in downtown Beirut. Al-Hassan's investigation into Hariri's death uncovered evidence that implicated Syria and Hezbollah in the killing.

Follow this story at BreakingNews.com

It was also not clear if the explosion targeted any political figure in Lebanon's divided community but it occurred at a time of heightened tension between Lebanese factions on opposite sides of the Syria conflict.

 

---

Ambulances rushed to the scene in the Ashafriyeh district, a mostly Christian area, as smoke rose from the area. 

The explosion ripped through the street where the office of the anti-Damascus Christian Phalange Party is located near Sassine Square.

Phalange leader Sami al-Gemayel, a staunch opponent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a member of parliament, condemned the attack.

"Let the state protect the citizens. We will not accept any procrastination in this matter, we cannot continue like that. We have been warning for a year. Enough," said Gemayel, whose brother was assassinated in November 2006.

Several cars were set on fire by the explosion and the front of a multi-story building was badly damaged. Residents ran about in panic looking for relatives while others helped carry the wounded to ambulances, Reuters reported. 

Pope tells Christians in Beirut: 'Be peacemakers'

Security forces blanketed the area.

Witness Danny Rizkallah told NBC News the blast took place close to the headquarters of a Lebanese opposition political party with links to Syria rebels and close to the scene of the 1982 assassination of then president-elect Bachir Gemayel. The affluent, largely Christian, district is also home to the American University of Science and Technology (AUST).

He said he was having lunch nearby when the blast lifted him from his chair. “It was an incredibly powerful explosion,” he said. “I knew immediately it was a bomb because it has such a different sound to shelling.”

“I rushed around the corner to see what happened there were lots of people injured by broken glass from the windows of nearby stores. It did a great deal of damage to nearby buildings and there was a lot of glass.

“For this to happen is shocking because we really thought this sort of thing had stopped in Beirut, and for it to happen in the Christian district is also very unusual. I really don’t know who is behind this, or why. Our politics is very messed-up.”

The last bombing in Beirut was in 2008 when three people were killed in an explosion that damaged a U.S. diplomatic car. 

U.S. officials are condemning the attack "in the strongest terms," calling the blast a terrorist attack.

"We condemn this act of terrorism," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

"There is no justification for such violence," she added. "We obviously express our heartfelt sympathies for the families and the loved ones of those who were killed and injured, and we stand by the people of Lebanon and renew our commitment to a stable, sovereign, and independent Lebanon."

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement there is "no justification for using assassination as a political tool." He says the U.S. will stand with the Lebanese government to bring to justice those responsible "for this barbaric attack."

Sunni-Shiite tensions
Tension between Sunnis and Shiites has been rumbling in Lebanon ever since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war but reignited after the Syria conflict erupted.

It reached its peak when Hariri, a Sunni, was killed in 2005. Hariri supporters accused Syria and then Hezbollah of killing him -- a charge they both deny. An international tribunal accused several Hezbollah members of involvement in the murder.

Clashes over Syrian conflict in Lebanon leave ten dead

Hezbollah's political opponents, who have for months accused it of aiding Assad's forces -- have warned that its involvement in Syria could ignite sectarian tension of the civil war. 

However fighting had broken out this year between supporters and opponents of Assad in the northern city of Tripoli.

Reuters, The Associated Press and NBC News' Paul Nassar contributed to this report.

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Here are thumbnail sketches of the five men who were being extradited Friday from the U.K. to the U.S., where they will stand trial on terror-related charges in federal district courts in Manhattan and Hartford, Conn. Abu Hamza al Masri, Khalid al Fawwaz and Adel Abdel Bari will be tried in New York and Babar Ahmad and Syed Tahla Ahsan will be tried in Hartford.

Abu Hamza al Masri, an Egyptian-born cleric, will face 11 counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Ore., between June 2000 and December 2001. Masri was formerly the imam of London’s Finsbury Park Mosque, where shoe bomber Richard Reid worshiped and was recruited. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks against the U.S., Masri was quoted as saying: "Many people will be happy, jumping up and down at this moment." In 2003, he famously addressed a rally in central London called by the Islamic al-Muhajiroun, where members spoke of their support for Islamist goals like the creation of an Islamic caliphate and upending the Middle Eastern regimes. Masri lost both hands and an eye in Afghanistan, either building a bomb or in a de-mining operation.

---

Khalid al Fawwaz has been under indictment in the United States since 1998, accused of conspiracy in planning the August 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in east Africa. He has been in U.K. jails since Sept. 28, 1998, fighting his extradition in both U.K. and EU courts.  Al-Fawwaz, a Saudi and a civil engineer, is 50 years old. He moved from Riyadh to London in 1994. According to documents placed in the court record by the FBI, he was then appointed by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as the first head of the terrorist group’s media organ, the Advice and Reform Committee. In 1996, as bin Laden delegated some of his leadership responsibilities to al-Fawwaz, the FBI reported.  By 1998, the FBI claimed in affidavits that he was a pivotal figure in planning the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people.

Related story

UK court rules Islamist cleric can be extradited to US to face terror charges

Abel Abdel Bari is an Egyptian who -- like al Fawwaz and other alleged conspirators (now dead) -- was indicted in the embassy bombings. He was arrested in London in July 20, 1999, and charged with conspiring with bin Laden in planning the twin attacks on Aug. 7, 1998, the eighth anniversary of the arrival of American forces in Saudi Arabia. Bari reportedly issued a statement following the bombings claiming responsibility.

The two remaining defendants Babar Ahmad and Syed Tahla Ahsan, both British, are accused of involvement with the pro-terror website Azzam.com before their arrests by their government. They have been held in custody since Aug. 5, 2004. 

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

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LONDON -- The radical Islamist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri on Friday lost his final appeal against extradition from Britain to the United States, where he is wanted on charges of supporting al-Qaida and aiding a fatal kidnapping in Yemen.

Profiles of terror suspects being sent from UK to face US trials

Judges at the High Court in London dismissed his request for more medical tests that his lawyers said would prove he was unfit to be extradited, clearing the way for a handover.

---

The decision caps a long legal battle, which saw the cleric launch a fresh appeal in Britain last week after the European Court of Human Rights rejected his earlier bid to avoid being sent to the United States.

Cleric al-Masri loses bid to avoid extradition to US on terror charges

Britain's Home Office, or interior ministry, has said it will hand over al-Masri and four other suspects "as quickly as possible."

There was controversy last month after a BBC journalist revealed the Britain's Queen Elizabeth had privately raised concerns several years ago about why al-Masri had not been arrested. The BBC later apologized for the "breach of confidence."

If convicted, the Egyptian-born al-Masri, 54, could face a sentence of more than 100 years in an ultra-secure "Supermax" prison.

Royal censorship? BBC says 'sorry' for daring to report UK queen's comments

He had argued such treatment would contravene Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhumane and degrading treatment.

Al-Masri, who has one eye and a metal hook for a hand, is one of the most radical Islamists in Britain, a country he has attacked for its support of U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He has also praised the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and was once a preacher at a North London mosque but was later convicted of inciting murder and racial hatred.

Al-Masri was indicted in 2004 by a federal grand jury in New York, accused of providing material support to al-Qaida and of involvement in a hostage-taking in Yemen in 1998 in which four hostages -- three Britons and one Australian -- were killed.

He was also accused of providing material support to al-Qaida by trying to set up a training camp for fighters in Oregon and of trying to organize support for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

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Updated at 5:54 p.m. ET: An apparent insider attack by Afghan forces has killed a U.S. service member and a contractor, officials said Sunday – bringing the total number of U.S. troops killed inside Afghanistan to 2,000 according to some measures.

A U.S. official confirmed the latest death in the 11-year-old conflict on Sunday.

The American service member killed was a soldier. The American contractor was working as a trainer for either the Afghan army or police, according to NBC News.

---

The attack happened Saturday at a checkpoint on a highway in Wardak Province, a defense official said. Two Afghan National Army soldiers approached the checkpoint and had a brief conversation with the troops there. One of the ANA soldiers then shot and killed the American service members and the contractor, officials told NBC News.

A brief firefight ensued, and left at least three Afghan Army soldiers dead - including the initial shooter, officials said.

The Afghan military claimed the Americans were killed by a mortar attack, but the American military insisted that is not true, that the Afghan soldier opened fire and they returned fire.

The dead U.S. soldier was identified as Sgt. 1st Class Riley G. Stephens, 39, of Tolar, Texas. Stephens was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

 

The U.S. toll in Afghanistan has climbed steadily in recent months with a spate of attacks by Afghan army and police against American and NATO troops, and questions about whether allied countries will achieve their aim of helping the Afghan government and its forces stand on their own after most foreign troops depart in little more than two years. The U.S. is preparing to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014.

The Associated Press reported Sunday that the latest death was the 2,000th member of the U.S. armed services killed inside Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2001.  However, that AP figure did not include those who died after sustaining injuries in Afghanistan or those killed in other countries as part of the same campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

According to icasualties.org, an independent monitoring organization which uses the wider definition, the latest death brings the toll of U.S. service members to 2035. At least a further 1,190 coalition troops have also died in the Afghanistan war, it says.

The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based research center, said 40.2 percent of the deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices, with the majority of those after 2009 when President Barack Obama ordered a surge of 33,000 troops to combat heightened Taliban activity. According to the Washington-based research center, the second highest cause, 30.6 percent, was hostile fire.

Tracking civilian deaths is much more difficult. According to the U.N., 13,431 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict between 2007, when the U.N. began keeping statistics, and the end of August. Going back to the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, most estimates put the number of Afghan deaths in the war at more than 20,000.

The 2001 invasion targeted al-Qaida and its Taliban allies after the Sept. 11 attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives in the United States.

"The tally is modest by the standards of war historically, but every fatality is a tragedy and 11 years is too long," Michael O'Hanlon, a fellow at the Brookings, told the AP. "All that is internalized, however, in an American public that has been watching this campaign for a long time. More newsworthy right now are the insider attacks and the sense of hopelessness they convey to many. "

Attacks by Afghan soldiers or police — or insurgents disguised in their uniforms — have killed 52 American and other NATO troops so far this year.

The so-called insider attacks are considered one of the most serious threats to the U.S. exit strategy from the country. In its latest incarnation, that strategy has focused on training Afghan forces to take over security nationwide — allowing most foreign troops to go home by the end of 2014.

Although Obama has pledged that most U.S. combat troops will leave by the end of 2014, American, NATO and allied troops are still dying in Afghanistan at a rate of one a day.

Even with 33,000 American troops back home, the U.S.-led coalition will still have 108,000 troops — including 68,000 from the U.S. — fighting in Afghanistan at the end of this year. Many of those will be training the Afghan National Security Forces that are to replace them.

"There is a challenge for the administration," O'Hanlon said, "to remind people in the face of such bad news why this campaign requires more perseverance."

The Associated Press and NBC News' Courtney Kube and Atia Abawi, in Kabul, contributed to this report.

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A one-time teen al-Qaida fighter who was also Guantanamo Bay’s youngest prisoner and last Westerner has been transferred to his native Canada on Saturday, the Canadian government confirmed.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Omar Khadr, 26, was flown from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Saturday on a U.S. government plane and transferred to Millhaven maximum-security prison in Bath, Ontario.

Khadr's case has been controversial both in Canada and abroad given his age when he was captured, the nature of his detention and hearing, and the reluctance of Canadian officials to accept his return.

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"I am satisfied the Correctional Service of Canada can administer Omar Khadr’s sentence in a manner which recognizes the serious nature of the crimes that he has committed and ensure the safety of Canadians is protected during incarceration,” Toews said.

A U.S. war crimes tribunal in 2010 sentenced Khadr to 40 years in prison, although he was expected to serve just a few more years under a deal that included his admission he was an al-Qaida conspirator who murdered a U.S. soldier.

Khadr was 15 when he was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan, and has spent a decade at Guantanamo, the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Khadr admitted planting 10 roadside bombs in Afghanistan as part of an al-Qaida cell and throwing a grenade that killed an American special forces medic, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer of Albuquerque, N.M.

Khadr was the first person since World War II to be prosecuted in a war crimes tribunal for acts committed as a juvenile. He was the youngest prisoner still at Guantanamo, but younger boys were previously held there.

Khadr, born in Toronto, was taken to Afghanistan by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, himself a senior al-Qaida member and confidant of Osama Bin Laden.

Bin Laden apprenticed the boy to a group of bomb makers who opened fire when U.S. troops came to their compound. Khadr was captured in the firefight, during which he was blinded in one eye and shot twice in the back.

In a written statement, Toews said Canada received Khadr's application for transfer from the United States on April 13. He said U.S. officials assured Canada it would receive a videocopy of an interview with Khadr, but it, along with other videos of interviews and unedited reports, was not sent until this month.

Former Canadian Ambassador Gar Pardy, however, said Canada's Conservative government -- which cultivates an image of being tough on crime -- dragged out the transfer.

"I think the government was mainly very mean-spirited in how it handled the case," Pardy said to CTV News.

Toews said he continues to be concerned that Khadr "idealizes" his father and denies Ahmed Khadr's association with al-Qaida. The Canadian public safety minister said he is also troubled by how "radicalized" Khadr has become from his time in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Guantanamo Bay.

“From the age of 15 to 26, he has been in some kind of jail, incarcerated. He has had no normal adolescent development at all,” CBC’s Susan Ormiston told CBC News.

Khadr's defense team and human rights groups had argued he was a "child soldier" who should have been sent home long ago for rehabilitation and challenged the notion that a battlefield killing amounted to a war crime.

Khadr was prohibited under the deal from calling witnesses at his sentencing hearing that would support defense claims that he was a "child soldier," forced into fighting the U.S. by a radical father who was an associate of bin Laden.

Khadr's sentence will expire on Oct. 30, 2018.

The U.S. Department of Defense also confirmed Saturday that it transferred Khadr to Canada, leaving 166 detainees at Guantanamo.

In the 2008 presidential election campaign, President Barack Obama promised to close the Guantanamo prison during his term, but that pledge has gone unfulfilled amid security concerns and opposition from Congress, which enacted laws making it more difficult to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo.

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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NAIROBI -- Kenyan police seized a cache of explosive-laden vests, grenades and automatic rifles in an overnight raid on a Nairobi apartment Friday, thwarting an imminent attack by Somali Islamist militants, a senior police official said. 

East Africa's biggest economy has been on a heightened state of security since Nairobi sent troops into Somalia to crush al-Qaida-linked insurgent group al-Shabab, which carried out a double suicide bombing in neighboring Uganda in 2010. 

---

Western embassies in Kenya have warned of potential attacks several times in the last nine months. 

"Obviously these are al-Shabaab items. This is a very organized team that is ready to cause big problems in the country," Moses Ombati, Nairobi's deputy police chief, told reporters at the apartment where the weapons were seized. 

"They were about to start executing their mission," he said. 

Acting on a tip-off, officers from the Crime Prevention Unit raided an apartment in the capital's Eastleigh district, dubbed "Little Mogadishu" because of its large ethnic Somali population, and arrested two men. 

Bombs ready for use
As the dawn call to prayer rang out from nearby mosques, police displayed the six suicide bomber vests, 12 grenades and four AK-47s with more than a dozen loaded magazines. 

Wiring could be seen protruding from wrapped-up bundles stuffed into the vests. Police said the neatly arranged packages contained explosives and were ready to be used. They also seized several mobile phone they said would likely have been used to trigger the bombs. 

The Kampala bombings that killed 79 soccer fans watching the World Cup final were al-Shabaab's first on foreign soil and highlighted both their intent and capability to strike beyond Somalia's borders. 

Al-Shabaab has threatened to bring down skyscrapers in the Kenyan capital. Counter-terror experts have doubted their ability to wage such a large-scale strike, but say they would have the capacity to attack soft targets such as bars and hotels. 

"We believe they were intending to attack (sites) where there are big crowds, such as super markets, bars, churches and bus stations," Ombati said. 

Kenya has been dogged over the last year by a wave of explosions and gun attacks blamed on al-Shabaab and their sympathizers in Nairobi, the port city of Mombasa and towns along its porous border with Somalia.

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Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Updated at 9:16 a.m. ET on Wednesday: The Taliban claimed Tuesday that 18 members of Afghanistan's border police force and local militia had deserted their respective services and joined the "Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" in Nangarhar, a province close to Pakistan.

"After holding a few meetings with local elders...all the 18 policemen and personnel of the local militia agreed and came to us at Surkh Rodh area of Nangarhar province," claimed Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

---

Hundreds of Afghan soldiers detained, fired over 'links with insurgents'

He said all the policemen joined the insurgent movement early on Tuesday.

There is no way to verify Taliban claims independently, but the organization supplied a list of the names of the 18 who had allegedly defected.

What's leading Afghan troops to turn on coalition forces?

Taliban insurgents regularly issue claims of responsibility for attacks and other incidents that are later proved to be false.

In a statement sent to NBC News early on Wednesday, Afghanistan's Ministry of the Interior said the Taliban's claims about the police defections were "baseless and untrue."

 

However, Mujahid said they had persuaded local elders and parents to convince their sons who were working in the new Afghan security services to stop supporting the "occupying" forces in Afghanistan.

Afghan Taliban income: $400 million last year, UN estimates

Many Afghans say the Taliban often threaten family members and relatives of those serving in the Afghan army or police, putting them under pressure to quit.

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SANAA, Yemen - A suicide bomber killed at least 22 people, mostly cadets, inside a police academy in Sanaa on Wednesday in an attack that bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, police investigators told Reuters.

The investigators said dozens of others leaving the academy at the end of the day's training sessions were injured in the attack.

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In a similar attack in May, a suicide bomber with explosives strapped under his uniform killed more than 90 at a military parade in the city – a massacre that alarmed Washington, which is deepening ties with the Middle-Eastern state.

The Associated Press reported the death toll in Wednesday’s attack as being “at least 10”, quoting a security official. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy in the two tolls.

'Massacre': At least 90 killed as bomber targets military parade rehearsal in Yemen

Yemen's government, weakened by an uprising that eventually toppled former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, has lost control over whole swathes of the country, allowing militants to overrun several towns in the southern province of Abyan.

The United States sees Yemen as a vital front in its global war on Islamic militants and is increasing its military support for the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.  

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Abu Hafs al Mauritani, a former senior adviser to al-Qaida known as 'Mr. Theology', was released from a prison in his home nation of Mauritania in west Africa over the weekend, his family confirmed to the Associated Press.

Sidi Ould Walid said his brother was released after renouncing his ties to the terror network and condemning the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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Hafs refused to be interviewed or to be filmed as he left the prison.

On militant forums, jihadists exchanged congratulations over the release.

Hafs was an adviser to Osama Bin Laden who helped form the modern al-Qaida by merging Bin Laden's operation with Ayman al-Zawahri's Islamic Jihad.

Hafs spent years in custody in Iran before being extradited to Mauritania in April. Walid says his brother was interrogated multiple times and his release indicates he is no longer seen as a threat.

An earlier report by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies said Abu Hafs' real name is Mahfouz Ould al Walid and he was relocated to Iran after the Taliban's Afghanistan fell in late 2001. It said Iran placed senior al-Qaida leaders under a loose form of house arrest in 2003.

U.S. intelligence officials reported in 2002 that Abu Hafs was killed in an American airstrike, but later said he was alive and in Iran.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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