A bomb hidden in a cemetery in a southern Afghan city exploded yesterday as a police official and his family were visiting the grave of a relative, police said.
The official and his brother were killed and seven other family members were wounded.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, but it matched the -declared strategy of the Taliban to target government officials and others who align themselves with the government or international forces.
A lawmaker for Helmand Province, Abdulwadood Popal, is a brother of the two men killed in the explosion, but he was not there at the time of the blast. The family was visiting the grave of their relative after morning prayers marking the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
The bomb was buried near the grave, Helmand Deputy Police Chief Ghulam Rabbani said. He said one of the men killed was the police chief for Nawa district, just west of Lashkar Gah. Rabbani did not provide the man’s name.
Rabbani said he believed the bomber had directly targeted this family, but did not say if it had been remotely detonated or had been triggered by the visitors.
Afghans commonly visit the graves of relatives on holy days to pay their respects. The Eid al-Fitr holiday marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims abstain from food and drink during the daylight hours.
In a message ahead of Eid al-Fitr, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar instructed his fighters once again to avoid killing or wounding Afghan civilians.
“Employ tactics that do not cause harm to the life and property of the common countrymen,” he said in an eight-page message released to news organizations last week.
However, the Taliban have said previously that they do not consider those who collaborate with the government to be civilians.
A UN report issued earlier this month said 1,145 civilians were killed and 1,954 injured during the first half of the year, most of them by militants.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS