Heavy fighting between Taliban and security forces in Afghanistan is believed to have left about 30 militants and several civilians dead, some killed in air strikes, a governor said yesterday.
Clashes erupted in the western province of Farah early on Monday and continued into the night, with international forces called in to carry out air strikes, provincial governor Rohul Amin said.
The strikes killed civilians as well as rebels who had taken shelter in people’s homes, he said, but the toll was unclear as the villages in question are outside government control.
Amin said that the insurgents had also publicly shot dead three civilians when they entered the area afteraccusing them of “working and spying for the government.”
Afghan forces supported by troops from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) pushed out the guerrillas in several hours of fighting on Monday, he said.
“Around 30 Taliban were killed, based on the information we got,” he said, although this figure could not be confirmed.
Taliban attacked the villages again at about midnight on Monday and the Afghan forces asked the ISAF for air assistance, Amin said.
“ISAF forces bombed Taliban positions in the village. Taliban were using civilian houses as shelter and trenches and they were firing from within the civilian houses,” he said.
“Based on the information we have received, unfortunately in the air strikes some civilian houses were also bombed, causing some civilian casualties,” he said, adding that a “big number” of Taliban fighters was also believed killed.
However the Taliban were still in the villages and authorities had no communication with their people there and so were unable to confirm the number of dead, Amin said.
ISAF’s media headquarters confirmed there had been “an incident” in Farah Province, but could not immediately say what had happened.
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