Two hundred American soldiers and civilians crossed the start line yesterday at a dusty airstrip in a Taliban stronghold to run Afghan-istan's first ever marathon.
Gun racks and fox holes as well as plastic palm trees dotted the course for the satellite race to the more orthodox Honolulu Mara-thon, with runners facing the challenge of high altitude and a bumpy course as well as the risk of rebel attack.
The race, which begins several hours before 20,000 people ran in Honolulu, was the idea of the US Army's 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, based at Schofield Barracks near Honolulu, who didn't want to miss out.
Tapes of Hawaiian music blared as competitors, decked out in black T-shirts, set off from between two cannons on five laps of the landing strip at Firebase Ripley, just outside Tirin Kot, 120km from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and 1,400m above sea level.
"I've never run one this high," said Major Dario Baratto of Alexandria, Virginia, a veteran of 11 marathons. "It's a dangerous area, but there's a lot of weapons along the route. There's bunkers in case anything happens."
Helicopters flew soldiers in from other bases across Afghanistan yesterday morning. Two jet fighters roared over the base, surrounded by the mountains of Uruzgan province, just before the race began to the cheers of the assembled runners.
One competitor was a young Afghan working for the military, apparently the first to compete in such a race on Afghan soil.
"This is not an official sport in our country," according to Mo-hammed Aref Payman, an official at the Afghan National Olympic Committee in Kabul. "This has never been done here before."
Some of the course is gravel, but most of it is covered by a fine, powder-like dust mercifully damped down by a rare shower on Saturday. Its single hill has been named Diamond Head for the Honolulu landmark, an extinct volcano whose base runners traverse twice during the marathon.
The runners in Tirin Kot will receive finisher's medals and certificates as well as their sponsored T-shirts, and their finish times will be recorded and listed in a booklet with those of the runners in Honolulu.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ¥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing