A huge blast at a gunpowder store in central Kabul destroyed dozens of shops and houses early yesterday, killing at least six people and wounding nine, officials said.
Deputy city police chief Zulmay Khan said gunpowder in shops selling ammunition for hunting rifles caused the explosion.
The blast gouged a huge crater out of the neighborhood, threw piles of burning wreckage into the street and shattered windows for hundreds of meters around.
Ali Shah Paktiawal, the criminal director of Kabul police, had said earlier it was a car bomb and that at least four or five people were killed. But after further investigation, Paktiawal said it "was not a terrorist act."
A statement from the Interior Ministry said six people were killed and nine wounded.
Police have not said what might have ignited the gunpowder.
At least three others were pulled from the rubble of collapsed mud-brick buildings and put into waiting ambulances.
Police, soldiers and crying relatives used their hands and shovels to dig frantically through the debris for more feared trapped underneath.
Khali Abdul Wahid, a leader in the area, said there were 400 shops near the blast site and that at least 100 were destroyed or damaged.
A reporter on the scene said at least 25 shops were completely destroyed by the blast.
Most of the shops, which sell ropes, construction material and gunpowder for hunting rifles, were shut at the time of the blast, which occured at 6:30am in part of the city where many buildings are already ruined from years of conflict.
Khan said most of the casualties were caused by houses and shops collapsing in the explosion.
Mahmadullah, 22, was just opening his shop when the blast occurred. Rescuers pulled him out alive but unconscious from the rubble of the building.
His trembling father, Mohammad Ashim, had a cut on his nose and head.
His shalwar kameez tunic drenched in blood and covered with dust, Ashim stood barefoot outside.
He said his other son also was injured.
Nearby, Abdul Basir looked for his three brothers in the messy heap of mud-brick that used to be his shop.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema