Two a penny

.More than 1,100 soldiers, including 800 French legionnaires as well as US and Afghan commandos, launched a major operation east of the Afghan capital Kabul, military officials said.
Five US special forces soldiers were wounded in the fighting in the Uzbeen Valley, a Taliban stronghold where 10 French soldiers were killed in an ambush in August 2008, the officials said.
It was one of the biggest military deployments by the French army in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
The operation, codenamed Septentrion, was aimed at “reaffirming the sovereignty of Afghan security forces in the north of the Uzbeen Valley,” Colonel Benoit Durieux of the French Foreign Legion said. .
An official said three of the Americans were seriously wounded, and that the injured had been evacuated by helicopter to the nearby Bagram air base.
At least one militant was killed and three wounded in the fighting, Lieutenant-Colonel Herve Wallerand, who led the operation, said. Another one had his artery cut,” a US special forces officer at camp Rocco, the army’s advance outpost in the valley said. Jets also hit Taliban positions.
Attacked by the insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and heavy machine gun fire, the French troops responded with shells, backed up by French and US attack helicopters.
US President Barack Obama has pledged an extra 30,000 troops to bolster an international force of 113,000 already fighting a Taliban-led insurgency that has become more virulent and deadly over the past year.
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AFP - French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy on Monday appealed for the release of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been jailed and put on trial at a notorious Yangon prison.

The wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy called on the Myanmar government to free the 63-year-old pro-democracy activist in an open letter made public by the Elysee presidential palace.

We now know that Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate, once again risks being sentenced to a prison term which, given her state of health, would be life-threatening for her, wrote the first lady. .

The 41-year-old model-turned-singer said she wanted to be the voice of all those in my country who find the fate awaiting this woman to be intolerable.

The man, John Yettaw, earlier this month swam across a lake to her residence where she has been kept in virtual isolation for most of the last 19 years.

Aung San Suu Kyi is facing a five-year jail sentence on charges of harbouring an American at her home in violation of the terms of her house arrest.

The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi comes just days after she was taken from her lakeside property and imprisoned at a guest house inside the Insein prison compound.

This decision is all the more unacceptable given the Nobel Peace laureate’s state of health which has deteriorated over the past several days, they said.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and human rights minister Rama Yade last week issued a joint statement saying they condemned in the strongest terms Aung San Suu Kyi’s arrest.

Aung San Suu Kyi - Carla Bruni-Sarkozy