Afghans protested for a fourth day yesterday over the killing of civilians by US-led coalition forces hunting Taliban, adding to pressure on Western-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai amid rising violence.
Some 2,000 university students chanted anti-US and anti-Karzai slogans in the eastern province of Nangahar, where up to six civilians died on Sunday.
Protests have also been seen in the province of Herat, near the Iranian border in the west, where the police chief said 30 civilians had been killed in recent days by US-led forces.
The students blocked the main highway between the capital, Kabul, to Pakistan, to protest the second killing of civilians by Western troops in Nangahar in less than two months.
Scores of police were stationed to control the crowd.
Civilian deaths are a sensitive issue for Karzai and the foreign troops in the face of an upsurge in attacks by the Taliban in what is seen as a crunch year for all sides in the conflict.
Scores of civilians have died, most due to suicide bombings and other attacks by the Taliban, but a significant number also due to action by foreign forces.
Karzai has repeatedly urged Western troops to exercise caution to avoid civilian casualties, but protesters say he is ineffective and should go.
In Herat, protests erupted over the weekend after US officials said more than 130 Taliban had been killed in several days of ground and air attacks.
Provincial authorities rejected the coalition figure and police chief Sayed Shafiq Fazli said 30 civilians were among the dead.
Neighbors of the dead in Nangarhar and officials said those killed on Sunday were civilians, including three women.
The US military said four Taliban fighters were killed and a woman and a teenage girl died after being caught in crossfire.
The deaths in Nangarhar follow the killing in early March of nearly a dozen civilians by US Marines, who opened fire after their convoy was attacked by a suicide car-bomber.
More than 4,000 people, including 1,000 civilians, died last year in the worst fighting since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.
Meanwhile, US-led forces and Afghan police shot at a convoy of vehicles speeding toward their checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, sparking a gunbattle that left five suspected insurgents dead, the US military said yesterday.
The troops opened fire after the three vehicles failed to slow down as they approached the checkpoint near Zara Kalay, a village in Maruf district of the southern province of Kandahar, late on Tuesday, the US-led coalition said in a statement.
"Once stopped, eight male insurgents exited the vehicles and began firing upon the checkpoint," the statement said. The border police and coalition forces shot five of the men to death, while the other three escaped, it said.
None of the police or coalition forces were hurt, it said.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS