In August, he was deployed to an outpost in volatile Kandahar Province in Afghanistan.
Military officials say Sergeant Bales, who has yet to be formally charged, left his small combat outpost in the volatile Panjwai district of Kandahar Province early in the morning last Sunday, walked into two nearby villages and there shot or stabbed 16 people, 9 of them children.
KABUL, Afghanistan — A young American soldier who walked off his remote combat outpost in a volatile region of eastern Afghanistan has been captured and is believed to be in the hands of the Taliban network led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, American military officials said Thursday.
It also cast doubt on the adequacy of security preparations at American diplomatic outposts in the volatile region.
The bigger problem, for Turkey's US and European allies, is how to shore up a strategically important Muslim democracy, Nato member and EU applicant that had long been considered a vital outpost of stability in a volatile region.
American and NATO officials have yet to release details of the shooting, which took place on Tuesday evening at a police checkpoint outside Combat Outpost Tynes, a small base in the volatile Arghandab district of Kandahar Province.
Ghana, by contrast, is an outpost of democracy and civil society in a volatile region.
HONG KONG — Nearly every combat outpost in Afghanistan is automatically part of a volatile mix: a hardened enemy, increasingly sophisticated and deadly land mines, nervous young soldiers, powerful weapons and machinery, suicide bombers, the stress of multiple deployments, searing heat, unfriendly locals, unfamiliar languages.
Traveling through regime-held territory with a YPG escort, we witnessed a volatile situation where NDF checkpoints stud one side of the road, and YPG outposts the other.
Insurgents entered the outpost.
