A roadside explosion killed at least five people and wounded 32 others in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar yesterday, police said.
A bomb blast hit a taxi carrying four women and two children, and injured others sitting in a nearby restaurant in the downtown Ahazrat Jibaba area of the city, said deputy provincial police chief General Salim Khan.
Dr. Azizullah Jan at Kandahar's Mirwais hospital said four men and one child were killed, and 32 others wounded.
American and Romanian forces based in Kandahar cordoned off the busy commercial area, which is crowded with shops and restaurants. The shoes and turbans of the wounded were scattered on the bloodstained street. The taxi, a three-wheeled tuk-tuk and two motorbikes were badly damaged by the blast.
Naimat Khan, who was sitting inside a roadside restaurant when the blast happened, said he helped put the wounded in passing vehicles and sent them to the hospital.
"Many people sitting outside were seriously wounded," he said. "Some people were covered in blood. I saw one man with his hand cut off from his body."
Police said the blast went off as the taxi traveled down the street, taking the women and children to a Muslim shrine. All six passengers were badly hurt.
Hundreds of bystanders gathered at the scene as American forces searched the area of the blast.
Jan, the hospital doctor, said that 19 of the wounded were sent to the US base at Kandahar for medical treatment.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which breaks a relative lull in violence in Afghanistan and could shake US military confidence that the resistance of Taliban-led militants is fading.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS