Four aid workers, including a British woman, were kidnapped in Afghanistan as election officials ordered recounts in seven provinces after last week’s parliamentary vote, raising further concerns of misconduct and fraud during the polls.
Meanwhile, two NATO troops, whose nationalities were not announced, were killed in a bomb attack in the volatile south, the alliance said on Sunday.
The British aid worker and three Afghan colleagues were ambushed as they traveled in two vehicles in northeastern Kunar Province.
Police fought a gunbattle with the kidnappers near the attack site before the assailants fled, Kunar police chief Khalilullah Zaiyi said.
Steven O’Connor, communications director for Development Alternatives Inc, a global consulting company based in the Washington area, said late on Sunday its employees, including a British national, were involved.
The company works on projects for the US Agency for International Development in Afghanistan.
Britain’s Foreign Office in London said it could “confirm that a British national has been abducted in Afghanistan. We are working closely with all the relevant local authorities.”
NATO also said on Sunday its forces killed five insurgents in a multi-day operation near the main southern city of Kandahar. Afghan and mostly US forces have been readying the push — called “Operation Dragon Strike” — to drive out militants from the Taliban stronghold.
According to a NATO statement on Sunday, the militants fought back with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. It said no Afghan or coalition troops were killed.
The push in Kandahar is seen as key to US President Barack Obama’s administration’s strategy to turn around the nine-year war as insurgents undermine the ability of an Afghan government to rule much of the country.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration is also struggling to win public support amid widespread perceptions it is inept and corrupt.
The recent election is becoming increasingly messy-looking and risks becoming another black mark against the government as allegations mount of misconduct and fraud. The charges — submitted by election observers and many of the 2,500 candidates vying for 249 seats in the national parliament — range from ballot box stuffing, to people voting multiple times or using fake cards, to children voting.
A government anti-fraud elections watchdog said on Sunday that is has received more than 3,500 complaints of cheating or misconduct — about 57 percent serious enough that they could affect the outcome of the vote.
The election commission has released results slowly. Only seven of the country’s 34 provinces have posted even partial results and, eight days after the vote, no province has yet to announce results in full.
Commission chairman Fazel Ahmad Manawi said they have already ordered recounts at several polling stations in seven provinces because the commission considered the provisional results — yet to be posted — “suspicious.” The provinces range from relatively peaceful Badakhshan in the north to volatile Khost and Logar in the east. He said the list of recounts was likely to grow.
But some candidates say the cheating that their observers saw was so egregious they can’t imagine a proper result emerging from the ballots submitted.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS