A bicycle bomb aimed at a vehicle carrying NATO-led peacekeepers exploded yesterday east of the Afghan capital Kabul, wounding at least seven Afghan civilians, some seriously, police and officials said.
The remote-controlled bomb was set on a bicycle left on the side of the main road from Kabul to the eastern city of Jalalabad and detonated at about 9:30am, district police chief Mohammed Akbar told reporters.
"Seven people were injured, some of them seriously: four were in a taxi passing by, three were pedestrians," Akbar said.
PHOTO: AP
Interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said the blast targeted a vehicle belonging to the 8,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is based in Kabul.
"There was an explosion in the Hod Qhail neighborhood, east of Kabul. It was aimed at an ISAF vehicle, but missed it and struck a taxi and pedestrians passing by."
ISAF spokesman Lieutenant Karen Tissot van Patot told reporters no peacekeepers were injured in the blast. She said it happened 9km east of the capital but gave no other details.
The explosion came about eight hours after a rocket shook the ISAF headquarters in central Kabul, although no one was injured in that incident.
No one claimed responsibility for either of the attacks yesterday.
Afghanistan's ousted Islamic hardline Taliban militia has stepped up violence elsewhere in the country during the past month and security has also deteriorated in Kabul.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
RSS