A suicide bomber detonated a blast in a bazaar in western Afghanistan yesterday, killing 18 police and civilians, in the bloodiest suicide attack in weeks, officials said.
Twenty-two people were injured in the blast, which took place near a police station in Del Aram district of Farah Province. The policemen were inspecting vehicles on the road outside at the time.
“So far, 18 people, including police and civilians, have been killed,” Farah Governor Rohul Amin said by phone.
Citing officials near the site, Amin said the bomber was wearing the all-enveloping burqa robe that Afghan women commonly wear.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said the attack was carried out by a member of the group — whom he identified as a man named Khalid.
Two police vehicles were destroyed in the attack.
Six of those killed were police, including a senior officer, another provincial official said, adding the rest of the dead were civilians.
Farah Deputy Governor Mohammad Younus Rasouli said the body of the bomber was destroyed.
“But we have found pieces of women’s dress, shoes and a burqa,” he said.
The interior ministry in Kabul gave a lower death toll, saying seven civilians and five policemen were killed.
Juma Khan, an official in the provincial police department, said women and children were also probably killed in the blast.
COMPLACENCY
Meanwhile, a UN rapporteur yesterday criticized what he called the “staggeringly high” complacency in Afghanistan about the hundreds of civilians being killed by international troops, Afghan police and extremist rebels.
International forces had killed about 200 civilians in operations in the past four months, while Taliban and other rebels had killed around 300, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Philip Alston said at a press conference in Kabul.
Police were also involved in unlawful killings, while secret militias apparently controlled by foreign intelligence services operate with impunity, he said.
“Afghanistan is enveloped in an armed conflict. But that does not mean that large numbers of avoidable killings of civilians must be tolerated,” said Alston, a professor of law in New York who is independent of the UN.
“The level of complacency in response to these killings is staggeringly high,” he said.
Most of the 200 civilians reported killed by international troops, often working with Afghan forces, died in air strikes, Alston said, adding that he had seen no evidence of foreign soldiers violating the law or human rights.
However, the forces were “surprisingly opaque” about accounting for the incidents.
They had said figures for civilian casualties caused by troops were “either not available in Afghanistan ... or that they are secret and cannot be provided to me,” Alston said.
He was also told the outcomes of investigations into individual soldiers suspected of unlawful killings were not tracked in Afghanistan so it was never known if anyone was held accountable.
Alston added it was “absolutely unacceptable” for foreign intelligence units to be “conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them.”
These units were outside of the government and Afghan structures and not much was known about them, he said.
The Taliban and other insurgent groups were estimated to have killed about 300 civilians in the past four months, roughly three-quarters in suicide attacks, he said.
Alston said he had been told not to meet with Taliban during his tour, but recommended that contacts be developed with the rebels to urge them to better comply with human rights law and to seek their views.
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