Afghan President Hamid Karzai remained headed for a single-round victory over his main challenger Abdullah Abdullah in partial results from last month’s disputed presidential election released yesterday.
With 92.8 percent of polling stations tallied, Karzai had 54.3 percent of the vote to 28.1 percent for Abdullah. The election commission said it had set aside ballots from another 2.15 percent of polling stations because of suspected irregularities.
Meanwhile, seven Afghan policemen were killed in a Taliban raid on their post in northern Afghanistan where attacks linked to the Islamist militants are soaring, the local governor said yesterday.
The attack happened late on Friday in Kunduz Province and comes as the country faces its worst violence in an eight-year war.
“Last night, Taliban attacked a police post in Durai area of Kunduz Province and killed seven policemen, one of them the commander of the post,” said Juma Khan Babar, district governor of Kunduz Imam Sahib district.
“Two of the policemen were left alive,” he said.
Kunduz was until recently relatively peaceful but has seen a surge in attacks since early this year.
Two New York Times reporters were kidnapped last week in the province, areas of which appear to have come under Taliban influence in recent months.
In related news, a powerful US senator on Friday warned against sending more US troops to Afghanistan, signaling growing skepticism over the war within US President Barack Obama’s own party.
Carl Levin, the influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was the latest top Democrat in Congress to voice opposition to a fresh military build-up in Afghanistan, as the White House weighs deploying yet more troop combat troops.
But his comments came as the Pentagon confirmed it intended to send more troops to Afghanistan to tackle a growing threat from improvised explosive devices.
Levin called for redoubling efforts to bolster Afghan security forces before any further expansion in US troops, which are set to reach 68,000 by the end of the year.
“We should increase and accelerate our efforts to support the Afghan security forces in their efforts to become self-sufficient in delivering security to their nation — before we consider whether to increase US combat forces above the levels already planned for the next few months,” said Levin, who returned last week from a trip to Afghanistan.
Levin’s comments came a day after a blunt warning from Obama’s top Democratic ally in the House of Representatives, speaker Nancy Pelosi, who suggested lawmakers and US voters are growing weary of a war that has dragged on for eight years.
The White House meanwhile said there would be no decision on the sensitive issue of more troops for “many, many weeks,” avoiding a confrontation with fellow Democrats for the moment.
“I will reiterate again that there hasn’t been a plan for and there isn’t an imminent decision on increased resources to Afghanistan,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
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