A bomb explosion hit a bus carrying Afghan women election workers in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, UN and Afghan officials said, killing at least three people in the bloodiest attack yet on preparations for the country's first post-Taliban vote.
A purported spokesman for the Taliban, which has vowed to sabotage the September election, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The explosion occurred at about 8am, when the locally hired bus was on the outskirts of the city of Jalalabad, 120km east of the capital, Kabul, UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said.
"At least three were killed and three or four seriously injured," Almeida e Silva said. He didn't give details.
Faizan, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, which surrounds Jalalabad, said the dead were two women and one child and that at least 10 injured people were being treated in local hospitals. Many Afghans use only one name.
General Abdul Malik Malikzai, a senior security official, blamed Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents for the attack, the latest in a string of bombings and shootings targeting election workers in the lead-up to the polls.
"This is obvious that Taliban and al-Qaeda carry out bombings and explosions. They are enemies of this country," he said, without giving evidence to support his claim.
Lieutenant Colonel Tucker Mansager, a spokesman for the US military in Afghanistan, said a homemade bomb had exploded near the vehicle, causing casualties, but he had no more details.
Abdul Hakim Latifi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, said that the bomb was detonated by remote control, and threatened more violence.
"The Taliban carried out this attack. We will not forgive any man or woman who is supporting US policies. We will continue this kind of attack to make sure the elections fail," he said in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.
The UN said the women were headed to Rodat district, east of Jalalabad, to register female voters.
More than one-third of the 4.5 million people signed up so far for the vote are women, about one-half the estimated total of eligible Afghans but well on the way to the 6 million that President Hamid Karzai says would be enough to make the vote legitimate.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the