A U.S. military base in Afghanistan was attacked by rockets today as ground fighting resumed in the biggest U.S.-led ground attack of the Afghan War on Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. CNN is reporting there have been multiple U.S. fatalities during today’s battles. Unconfirmed reports say that Canadian, Australian, Danish, German and French forces and planes joined U.S. troops in the operation around Gardez that started early Saturday morning. The Washington Post reported upwards of 1,000 U.S. and other Western military personnel have been deployed. The fierce resistance from rebel forces repulsed the U.S.-led offensive on Saturday, forcing Afghan fighters and U.S. advisers to withdraw close to Gardez. The region remains under constant bombardment by B-52s and jet fighters.

Meanwhile, according to U.S. war officials, Pentagon forces used a deadly bunker-busting bomb in Afghanistan over the weekend. It was the first time the thermobaric bomb was used in the U.S. attacks. The bomb was among the more than 80 pieces of ordnance dropped on Saturday by U.S. warplanes. The bomb belongs to a category of so-called fuel air munitions. It’s capable of penetrating deep underground to reach hidden command bunkers or caves and explode upon hitting its target. Its explosive charge is designed in a way that allows the attacker to practically pulverize all occupants of the underground structure. According to independent experts, the bomb, once detonated, produces rapidly expanding shockwaves flattening anything near the epicenter of the aerosol fuel cloud and capable of causing extensive damage far beyond the immediate strike area. In February of 2000, Human Rights Watch warned that fuel air explosives, which are compared by some experts to low-yield nuclear bombs, could cause massive loss of life, especially in or near populated areas.

Senior defense officials confirmed over the weekend the Pentagon is completing plans to send several hundred U.S. special forces soldiers to Yemen. The Pentagon is calling them military advisers. A U.S. military official quoted by The Wall Street Journal compared the potential mission to the U.S. commitment in the Philippines, where there are more than 600 troops. The U.S. is also preparing to send special forces to the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Indian police shot dead two people in the bloodied western state of Gujarat today as the death toll from the country’s worst religious violence in a decade climbed well into the hundreds. The main opposition Congress Party said the death toll was more than 800, citing figures gathered by its offices across Gujarat, India’s second most industrialized state. The violence was triggered by a train attack last week in which 58 Hindus burned to death. Since then, victims have told horrific tales of families being burned alive as raging crowds carrying swords, knives and hockey sticks freely roamed the streets and set fire to shops and houses.

Thousands of supporters of Madagascar’s opposition leader and self-declared president swarmed government ministries today in their first attempt to install alternative cabinet ministers into office. Despite martial law that was declared after election-related violence began to flare last week, soldiers guarding the Finance Ministry did not prevent the alternative finance minister from entering the building. Crowds also surrounded the Energy and Mines Ministry. Opposition supporters had set up barricades and trenches throughout the city over the weekend to help prevent military vehicles from entering the capital. Unrest in Madagascar started after Marc Ravalomanana declared himself president nine days ago, disputing official election results. He said he won more than half the vote in the December 16th presidential race.

More than 150 marchers gathered outside a federal courthouse in New York on Sunday to protest the overturning of the convictions of three white police officers in the torture case of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. Meanwhile, the Reverend Al Sharpton meets today with New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Sharpton and other civil rights leaders are threatening mass protests and civil disobedience if the officers are allowed back on the force. Last Thursday, a federal appeals court ordered a new trial for officer Charles Schwarz, who denies he was in the bathroom when officer Justin Volpe sodomized Louima with a broken broomstick in 1997. The court also found there was insufficient evidence to sustain the obstruction of justice convictions of Schwarz and officers Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle says President Bush’s bid to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and his nomination of U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals are dead. In an interview on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Daschle said he would require at least 60 votes before allowing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling to be subject of a Senate floor vote. Meanwhile, California Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein said the Senate Judiciary Committee will reject the Pickering nomination by a 10-9 party-line vote. She has said it will not go to the Senate floor for a vote. Asked Sunday if that means the Pickering nomination is dead, Daschle said it is.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney will start work at the State Department within weeks as deputy assistant Secretary of state in the Near East Bureau. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said she would have an economic portfolio, which another U.S. official described as a mandate to promote economic liberalization and U.S. trade and investment in the region.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe denounced his rival in presidential elections as a tool of white and foreign interests. The incumbent and challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, began the final week of campaigning with rallies in Harare. We’re going to have more on that story later in the week.

And this news from Colombia: A senator and two companions who were trying to negotiate the release of rebel hostages were shot in the head and killed, apparently by the rebels, at least this according to Colombian police. The bodies of Colombian Senator Martha Catalina Daniels, her driver Carlos Lozano and Ana Maria Medina were found Saturday in a deep ravine outside the town of Zipacón, 35 miles north of Bogotá. Medina was the wife of a local politician who is being held hostage, apparently by the FARC. The three were trying to win the freedom of Medina’s husband and a former mayor who were kidnapped in May, this according to a statement released by Columbia’s intelligence police.

Scores of captives from the Afghan War refused meals on Sunday at Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo, Cuba, in a protest that has lasted five days. But the U.S. military said only 13 of the 300 detainees had kept to the hunger strike since its start. Military officials presented the new tally after finishing a cell-by-cell count of those who had refused food at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base detention site since the start of the protest on Wednesday. Previous estimates of the hardcore hunger strikers had been much higher. The hunger strikers say they’re protesting an incident Tuesday in which a guard stripped a detainee of his turban during prayers. Since then, the military has said detainees can keep their turbans on but must allow searches of them.