A bomb blew up a small electricity department building in southern Afghanistan's troubled Helmand province yesterday, killing two people and wounding eight, police said.
The insurgent Taliban movement said it had planted the bomb in the Gereshk district in an attempt to kill the district police chief, Razak Khan, who regularly held meetings there.
Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said that Khan was among the wounded in the blast but officials could not immediately confirm he had even been there.
The attackers had somehow been able to pass through security outside the building to plant the bomb, said General Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, Helmand province police commander.
"How it happened, we don't know but some explosives were planted inside the building which caused the explosion," he said.
"As a result of the explosion, two employees of the department have been killed, six other employees and two civilians have been wounded," he said.
The one-story building, made of traditional mudbrick, collapsed after the blast, causing scores of people to flock to the site.
The building, about 200m from a small hydropower plant, was where people came to pay their electricity bills or contact officials about their power supply.
The Taliban, which frequently carries out bombings as part of its insurgency, is most active in Helmand, Afghanistan's largest province and also the producer of most of its huge illegal opium crop.
The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they were ousted for harboring al-Qaeda leaders.
The militants target Afghan and international forces as well as government officials and institutions.
The insurgency was at its deadliest last year with more than 8,000 people killed, according to figures used by the UN. This included about 1,500 civilians, although most of the dead were rebel fighters.
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
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
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