A bomb killed four people, including two US-led soldiers, in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand on Sunday in an attack claimed by Taliban rebels.
The explosion was in the dangerous Nad Ali district, one of Afghanistan’s main opium-growing areas where Taliban insurgents are said to earn money by protecting the lucrative crop from US-backed efforts to eliminate it.
It came as the US warned its allies at a security conference in Germany that fighting the insurgency could prove tougher than stabilizing Iraq and appealed, along with Britain, for more troops and equipment.
“Two coalition service members, one member of the Afghan National Civil Order Police and one local national civilian were killed today by an improvised explosive device in Helmand,” the US-led coalition said.
Helmand deputy police chief Kamalodin Khan told AFP the group had been checking an improvised explosive device that they believed had been defused.
“Two American advisers, an Afghan interpreter and a policeman were killed,” he said, adding that the bomb was detonated by remote control.
The Taliban said it carried out the attack. Two “American soldiers” and several Afghan police were killed in the blast, spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said by telephone.
Nad Ali, east of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, is a dangerous desert area that is largely out of government control.
US security contractors and soldiers, as well as British troops, have been based in the district with Afghan security forces for nearly two weeks as part of a push to destroy the illegal opium crop.
They have come under attack several times but without loss of life, officials said late last week.
Links between the drugs trade and insurgents, who earn money by protecting trafficking routes and opium fields, have led the NATO-led force that works alongside the US coalition to step up efforts to help fight the business.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS