A suicide attack outside a CIA base killed one civilian and wounded two security guards yesterday in eastern Afghanistan, an Afghan official said.
The blast happened outside Camp Chapman, the same base that was hit in December in one of the worst attacks in the history of the US intelligence agency, said Mubarez Zadran, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
The base is in Khost Province, a dangerous region southeast of the capital.
The suicide bomber was in a car packed with explosives, the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement. The victims were all Afghans, the ministry said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility soon after the attack.
In December, seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his cache of explosives at Camp Chapman.
In northern Afghanistan, eight Norwegian soldiers serving with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force were injured, two of them seriously, in an attack, the Norwegian military said yesterday.
The Norwegian troops had been heading to meet Afghan security forces in the northern Ghormach district on Sunday afternoon when they came under attack, and a six-hour firefight ensued, the military said.
“The two seriously injured soldiers are being treated at a German field hospital in Mazar-i-Sharif. We think their lives are no longer in danger, but they suffered very serious wounds,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Espen Lien said.
The attackers also slightly wounded six other Norwegian troops with bullets and shrapnel.
The Norwegian soldiers finally managed to withdraw when they received reinforcements and air support.
“No casualties among the insurgents have so far been reported,” the military said in a statement.
In eastern Afghanistan, eight civilians, two of them children, were killed and 14 more wounded when a roadside bomb struck a minivan, police and a doctor said yesterday.
The victims were among a group of people traveling in Paktia Province late on Sunday when the bomb exploded, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Dastagir Rustamyar said.
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS