A suicide bomber blew himself up yesterday in a scenic Afghan town near Kabul, killing six people -- most of them children -- and wounding 12, officials said.
Four of those wounded were Italian engineers, they added.
Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary earlier said six children were killed in the attack near a NATO-led unit in Paghman, about 25km west of Kabul, but later he said some adults were among the dead.
PHOTO: AP
"Most of them were children, maybe three or four, the rest of them were adults," he said.
"My brother was covered with blood and I saw a huge cloud of smoke rising and when I put my hand to my head and I realized I was also wounded," said Hanifa, a small girl, as she was carried to an ambulance.
Four Italians and eight Afghan civilians were hurt, he said, with initial reports indicating the Italians were working on a bridge under construction in the area.
"It is not clear yet whether they are civilian engineers or army soldiers," Bashary said.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which includes around 2,390 Italian soldiers, confirmed its forces were involved in the incident but would not provide the nationalities or details of what happened.
"We are aware of an incident. It was ISAF troops," an official in the media office said.
Most Italian soldiers in Afghanistan are stationed in the west of the nation, but Italy also has troops in Kabul involved in reconstruction and development projects meant to win Afghan "hearts and minds."
The blast was near the center of a normally quiet town that sits at the foothills of the Paghman mountains and is a popular picnic spot for Afghans.
ISAF soldiers had blocked off the area, a reporter said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The hardline Islamist Taliban have killed at least 200 civilians in more than 140 suicide attacks so far this year in their campaign to oust the pro-Western Afghan government and eject the more than 50,000 foreign troops from the nation.
Afghanistan has witnessed escalating violence since the Taliban relaunched their insurgency two years ago. Since then, more than 7,000 people have been killed.
The deadliest attack was early this month and led to the deaths of nearly 80 people, most of them schoolchildren. It is still not clear who was responsible for that blast.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion