Suicide attackers hit an Afghan army recruitment center in northern Afghanistan and an army bus in Kabul yesterday, killing 10 military personnel in total, officials said.
The bus was attacked by two suicide bombers, who killed five army personnel and wounded another nine, a defense ministry spokesman said.
The vehicle was on its daily run driving staff from the Kabul military training center to work when two suicide attackers armed with automatic rifles opened fire, General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.
“One of the suicide attackers was shot dead, but the second managed to detonate his explosives strapped to his body and martyred five of our personnel and wounded another nine,” Azimi said.
The incident took place on Pul-e-charkhi road, which links Kabul to Afghanistan’s eastern provinces and runs on to the Pakistani border. There are many foreign military bases and Afghan security forces’ training facilities along the route, so that it is frequently taken by Afghan and NATO-led troops.
Kabul has been relatively peaceful over the last year, but the road has seen a number of bloody attacks against security forces.
Separately, four suicide attackers stormed an army -recruitment center in northern Kunduz Province early yesterday, sparking a gunbattle that killed three soldiers and two police officers and wounded 20 recruits, officials said.
“Four bombers attacked the recruitment center. Three of them have been shot dead and one is still resisting,” Kunduz Deputy Governor Hameedullah Danishi said.
Azimi said two suicide attackers were shot and killed as they were trying to enter the facility, while two of them managed to get in and were still fighting. He could not give any figures on casualties.
Kunduz is one of the most volatile provinces in the relatively peaceful north of Afghanistan.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Muhahid, claimed responsibility for both attacks. He said more than a dozen Afghan army soldiers were killed in the attack in Kunduz.
The Taliban spokesman also claimed responsibility for the attack in Kabul, but could not give any figures on casualties.
Meanwhile, one civilian was killed yesterday morning and four children were wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in Panjwayi district, in Kandahar Province.
“The driver of the civilian vehicle was killed and four children were wounded,” said Baran Khaksar, the district chief.
Home-made bombs are weapons of choice for the Taliban insurgents who have been waging an increasingly deadly insurgency against the Western-backed government and its allies after they were ousted from power in 2001 by a US-led invasion.
The south and east of the war-torn country suffer the brunt of the violence.
Last week, NATO said it would battle hard through the bitter Afghan winter, which usually signals a lull in fighting, keeping up pressure on the insurgency until spring.
US military leaders back the government’s plan for the Afghan police and army to assume responsibility for security by 2014, with the timetable agreed at a major NATO summit in Lisbon last month.
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