Mohammad Saddiq didn't see the five crouching gunmen until the mine-clearing agency vehicle he was traveling in began to cross a dry riverbed in southern Afghanistan. \nSeconds later, a hail of gunfire shattered the car's windows and mirrors, punctured its tires, and left the 38-year-old medic -- three bullets struck his right shoulder -- writhing in pain. The driver too, was hit and the car rolled to a dusty halt. \n"The gunmen came running over and asked us one question," Saddiq said. "They asked, `Are there any foreigners with you?'" \nAfter a hasty search, the assailants replied with a final, angry burst of fire and fled. \nAfghanistan, struggling to achieve peace after nearly a quarter century of war, has long been a dangerous place to live and work. \nBut it's getting worse. \nToday rebels seeking to undermine the government and reconstruction efforts are taking direct aim at aid workers. \n"There's been a very, very big deterioration in security countrywide, especially for aid workers," said Rafael Robillard of ACBAR, an umbrella group of 86 aid agencies in Kabul. "Aid workers are being specifically targeted by people trying to destabilize the government, which is very dependent on aid. We're easy targets. It's a serious problem." \nIn the last month alone, seven Afghan mine-clearers have been shot and one killed in four separate ambushes in the south of the country. In March, an International Red Cross water engineer from El Salvador was murdered in southern Kandahar province. And in April, assailants threw grenades at a UN children's agency compound in the east. \nThe government of President Hamid Karzai has blamed the violence on Taliban fighters, who they say are stepping up guerrilla attacks with allied supporters of former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and al-Qaeda remnants. \nUS troops \nAbout 11,500 US-led coalition troops, deployed in the country in support of Karzai's government, conduct regular operations to hunt down armed opposition groups. In the last two months, four US soldiers have been killed in fire-fights with rebels. \nThe UN has responded by suspending travel on some roads and restricting UN vehicle movements to daylight hours. \n"This is a new situation and we are trying to deal with it in a way that allows us to keep operating," said Manoel de Almeida e Silva, the UN spokesman in Kabul. "Is this ideal? No." \nRobillard said several international aid groups had pulled out of the south altogether and many others had scaled down operations there. The ICRC has suspended projects in some provinces and ordered expatriate staffers -- at least 25 of whom have left the country -- to stick to the major cities. \nUnder cover \nMany aid agencies in the south are moving around in beat-up, unmarked cars or taxis and some foreigners working in the region are donning traditional Afghan dress. Barker said CARE had been taking such measures for years. \nMany CARE employees, including Afghans, have been afraid to visit Ghazni -- a hotbed of suspected Taliban activity southwest of Kabul that is also home to CARE's largest office outside the capital. \nThe US says it has been shifting its own focus from combat to reconstruction operations with so-called "Provincial Reconstruction Teams," or PRTs, each comprised of 60-100 soldiers -- half civil affairs experts, half responsible for providing security. \nAmerican officials say the idea is to increase aid and security simultaneously, but aid workers say PRTs are having the opposite effect. \n"What they are doing is creating confusion in the minds of the people and actually increasing our insecurity," Robillard said. \n"What you have is people in and out of uniform distributing aid, but the ones in uniform are also engaged in hunting al-Qaeda and Taliban and killing them. Not everyone makes the distinction," he said.
BUYING TIME: Russia is estimated to have suffered over 100,000 casualties in its push to capture the strategically insignificant town, giving Ukraine time to ready its troops Whether Bakhmut has fallen or not, Moscow is being pulled deeper into an ever more costly fight for the frontline city as Kyiv readies a major offensive, experts said. Russia’s claim to have conquered the destroyed city, which Ukraine rejected on Sunday, does not mean significant new terrain from which to launch attacks nor harden defenses. However, Moscow has made the eastern city’s capture a key aim and has fought the war’s longest battle, as well as one of its deadliest, to try to win what it would like to bill as a significant success. US President Joe Biden, speaking from the G7
DEEPFAKE: Using AI to change their face and voice, a fraudster convinced a businessman that they were his friend and needed 4.3 million yuan for a public tender A scammer in China used artificial intelligence (AI) to pose as a businessman’s trusted friend and convince him to hand over millions of yuan, authorities have said. The victim, surnamed Guo, received a video call last month from a person who looked and sounded like a close friend. However, the caller was actually a con artist “using smart AI technology to change their face” and voice, said an article published on Monday by a media portal associated with the government in Fuzhou City. The scammer was “masquerading as [Guo’s] good friend and perpetrating fraud,” the article said. Guo was persuaded to transfer 4.3
A Malaysian comedian better known for mocking attempts by Western chefs at Asian cooking has had his Chinese social media account suspended after making jokes about China. Nigel Ng (黃瑾瑜), who uses the name Uncle Roger, is the latest comedian to feel the consequences of jokes that could be perceived as reflecting negatively on China under increasingly intense censorship and rising nationalism. Last week, a Chinese comedian came under police investigation for a joke about stray dogs. Ng on Thursday posted a video clip from an upcoming comedy special in which he pokes fun at Chinese surveillance and Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over
Gunmen in Ecuador opened fire in a restaurant in a beach town popular with tourists, killing at least six people and wounding six more, prosecutors said on Sunday. The attack happened on Saturday night in a busy nightlife area of the town of Montanita on the Pacific coast, the prosecutors’ office said on Twitter. It gave no information on the age or identity of the people who were shot. Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s top producers of cocaine, Ecuador is weathering the biggest surge in crime in its recent history. Crime linked to drug trafficking caused the murder rate to almost double
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