A younger brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he survived an attack yesterday when gunmen opened fire on his convoy and killed one of his bodyguards.
Ahmad Wali Karzai — who heads the provincial council in troubled southern Kandahar — said the attackers opened fire with rockets and heavy machine guns on his convoy heading down a highway near the capital Kabul.
“We were driving to Kabul. All of a sudden we were attacked from the mountains by rockets and PK machine guns,” Karzai said. “My car was in the lead, my bodyguards were driving in a separate car just behind me which was hit. One of my bodyguards was hit and later died.”
PHOTO: EPA
The politician said he had been returning to the capital from the eastern city of Jalalabad after talks with dozens of tribal elders from Kandahar.
Wali Karzai is a controversial figure who has been accused by some Western media outlets of involvement in Afghanistan’s huge drugs trade. He strongly denies the allegations.
Earlier, a group of army soldiers opened fire in a market in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, killing three shopkeepers, police said.
The three soldiers are being held in an army compound following the shooting in Jalalabad, said provincial Police Chief General Mohammad Ayub Salangi. A spokesman for Nangarhar’s governor confirmed three dead civilians and one wounded.
Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign ministry said that a planned summit to be hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with his Afghanistan and Pakistan counterparts has been postponed.
The summit, scheduled for today, was put off because of the busy program of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not