WAR DEVELOPMENTS

UNITED STATES

> Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a letter to lawmakers, said Iraq and Afghanistan military operations will cost almost $136 billion for the 2009 budget year that began Oct. 1 if they continue at their current pace.

> Five Blackwater Worldwide security guards pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Washington to manslaughter charges in the 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. Prosecutors said the men —- former Marines Donald Ball of West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard of Knoxville; Evan Liberty of Rochester, N.H.; and Army veterans Nick Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., and Paul Slough of Keller, Texas, —- unleashed a gruesome attack on unarmed Iraqis, including women and children. The guards contend they opened fire after coming under attack.

> An attorney for a former Blackwater security contractor said federal prosecutors intend to charge Andrew Moonen, now 28 and living in Seattle, in the killing of an Iraqi guard in 2006. Moonen, a former Army Ranger, was wandering drunk in Baghdad’s Green Zone after a Christmas Eve party in 2006 when he encountered and fatally shot Raheem Khalif, 32, a guard for Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi, according to a congressional report. Moonen reported the shooting as a gunfight, and the State Department flew him back to the U.S. Outraged Iraqis questioned how an American could kill someone in those circumstances and return to the U.S. a free man.

IRAQ

> The U.S. military said troops killed a civilian in a vehicle Tuesday after the driver failed to heed warnings to stop in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

> Gunmen killed a member of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and a bodyguard in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Kirkuk. Separately, gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier in a drive-by shooting in Riyad, north of Baghdad.

> A parked car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded in a primarily Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding six.

AFGHANISTAN

> A NATO serviceman was killed Tuesday in a “hostile incident” in southern Afghanistan. The soldier’s nationality and the precise location of the incident were not disclosed.

> Two gunmen fatally shot a Muslim cleric in a mosque in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, before fleeing on a motorcycle. It was the second killing in a mosque in the area in less than two weeks.

> Eight women were killed Monday in central Uruzgan province when they were caught up in a clash between coalition and Taliban forces.

PAKISTAN

> Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari called Tuesday for foreign allies to provide more support —- but not more troops —- to help win the battle against extremist militias along his country’s volatile border with Afghanistan. The comments came ahead of an expected influx of 20,000 American troops into Afghanistan to combat a Taliban insurgency that has sent violence skyrocketing in the last two years.

> Taliban militants kidnapped 11 pro-government tribal elders in the Mohmand tribal region in volatile northwest Pakistan, where they had traveled from the neighboring Bajur tribal region to ask militants to leave the area.

> Police said suspected militants hanged a Pakistani and shot an Afghan in the North Waziristan tribal region, leaving notes with the bodies accusing them of being U.S. spies.