Seven deminers kidnapped in western Afghanistan have been beheaded by their abductors, police said yesterday, as NATO announced the deaths of three soldiers in Taliban attacks.
The seven were part of a group of 28 deminers who were snatched on Wednesday in a district that is the focus of the Taliban insurgency in Farah Province, but no one has claimed responsibility for the mass kidnapping.
“Seven of the deminers were beheaded. We have recovered the body of one of them and the rest of the bodies are with tribal elders,” Farah provincial deputy police chief Mohammad Ghaws Malyar said.
He said the fate of the other deminers who were taken in the Bala Buluk District was unknown.
Criminal groups and insurgents have repeatedly kidnapped Afghans and foreigners since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime, but most are eventually freed for ransom or in exchange for the release of prisoners.
The deminers were working for the Demining Agency for Afghanistan, an Afghan charity based in the southern province of Kandahar.
In a similar incident in December, 18 Afghans working for the Mine Detection Center were kidnapped in the eastern province of Khost, which borders Pakistan, and freed unharmed a day later in a joint Afghan-foreign operation.
Also yesterday, three NATO soldiers and three policemen were killed in bomb and insurgent attacks in the restive south and east, as the top US commander in the country said the overall number of insurgent attacks had decreased this summer.
NATO said one coalition soldier died following an insurgent attack and another was killed in a bomb explosion in the south, while a third service member died after another insurgent attack in the east.
In Kandahar City, three Afghan policemen were killed, while three policemen and three civilians were wounded, in a roadside bomb blast that ripped through a police vehicle, provincial police chief Abdul Raziqtold said.
Yesterday’s incidents brought the overall death toll for foreign forces to 293 this year in Afghanistan, according to a tally based on that collated by the independent Web site iCasualties.org.
However, US General David Petraeus said attacks were down by “a few percent” for May and last month, the beginning of the traditional annual fighting season, although he said the number of homemade bomb explosions had risen.
“June saw fewer insurgent attacks than last June and that’s quite significant and May was quite the same,” he said.
“So you have the first two months of comparison with the previous year is actually a reduction. July is trending that way. That is very significant,” he told reporters in the Afghan capital Kabul.
Intelligence analysts had predicted a rise in insurgent attacks of 18 percent to 30 percent on last year, Petraeus said, while he cautioned that it was too early to declare that the insurgency had been significantly hit.
Petraeus made his comments as he prepared to leave his post this month and as US and other coalition forces prepared to begin a gradual drawdown of combat troops, with all scheduled to go home by the end of 2014.
US President Barack Obama has announced the withdrawal of the first 10,000 of nearly 100,000 US forces from Afghanistan this year, with another 23,000 to leave by the end of next summer.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese