A NATO soldier was killed by insurgents yesterday in eastern Afghanistan, the alliance said, as an Afghan government official was gunned down in the southern city of Kandahar.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the soldier, whose nationality was not revealed, “died following an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan.”
The total number of foreign soldiers to die in the Afghan war so far this year is 617, according to an AFP count based on icasualties.org’s tally. Last year’s total was 521.
In Kandahar, where the insurgency is concentrated, the province’s deputy director for education, Ahmadullah, was shot dead near his home yesterday by armed men on a motorbike, his boss Najibullah Ahmadi said.
He said that Ahmadullah had been walking home with his young daughter from a bakery.
The girl, whose age was not immediately known, “is not hurt, she’s OK,” said Ahmadi, the provincial education director.
Government officials have been specifically targeted by militants throughout this year, especially in Kandahar, which the Taliban regard as their territory.
According to media reports, the assassinations have created a climate of fear in the city and a dearth of people willing to take government posts.
The US and NATO have more than 150,000 troops in Afghanistan, with efforts concentrated in and around Kandahar in an effort to rout the insurgents from their key stronghold.
In eastern Ghazni Province, an increasingly hot insurgency spot, officials said the bodies of four police officers seized by militants during an attack earlier this week had been found.
The dead were among 19 police officers who went missing on Monday following a Taliban attack on the province’s remote Khogyani District, said Delawar Zahid, the provincial police chief.
Contrary to earlier official denials, he said the Taliban had briefly taken the district, but that it was reclaimed by pro-government forces after a long fight.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
RSS