A roadside bomb ripped through a trailer packed with guests traveling to a wedding in southern Afghanistan, killing 21 civilians and wounding up to six others, officials said yesterday.
The blast occurred in the southern province of Helmand on Wednesday, the interior ministry and the top Afghan commander for the south said, correcting an earlier statement that the attack had happened yesterday.
“A trailer being towed by a tractor was hit by a roadside bomb ... and killed 21 civilians and wounded six others,” Afghan General Shir Mohammad Zazai said.
Afghan soldiers were dispatched to help with rescue.
“Among the killed there were also teenagers but we don’t have exact figures now,” Zazai said.
It was one of the deadliest bombings in weeks and comes with Afghanistan buffeted by soaring insurgent attacks and suffering record levels of violence in the eight years since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime.
The attack took place in Garmsir district, an insurgent stronghold where US Marines have for months been trying to flush out Islamist militants ahead of landmark presidential and provincial council elections on Aug. 20.
In rural Afghanistan, where most people live in poverty without private vehicles, trailers are often harnessed to farm tractors to transport people.
“A tractor vehicle full of civilians was going to a wedding party in Garmsir district of Helmand province,” the interior ministry said.
“On the way the tractor was hit by an IED [improvised explosive device]. As a result, 21 civilians, most of them children and women and young boys, were killed and five wounded,” ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
It was too early to give a breakdown of the dead, he said, condemning what the ministry called an “inhuman and cruel attack of the terrorists” and calling on Afghans to help unmask “such bad elements who are trying to kill civilians.”
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.
Helmand is a Taliban stronghold and the militants rely heavily on bomb attacks in their campaign to drive out the Western-backed Afghan government and about 100,000 international troops deployed in the country.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has ruled Afghanistan for nearly eight years, is the leading candidate in this month’s presidential election.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS