A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded market in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing 17 people and wounding 47, officials said.
The bomber walked into the market opposite a police station in Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand province, said Ghulam Muheddin, the provincial governor's spokesman.
The blast killed 17 people and wounded 47, six critically, said Hanif Khan, a local hospital official. Among those injured were 15 children, Muheddin said.
Shattered glass, body parts and blood-soaked turbans were scattered across the site of the bombing, which wrecked shop fronts, said Hayatullah Khan, a security guard at the scene.
Among the dead were the owner of the market, a former Lashkar Gah police chief, his son and a nephew, he said.
The police chief was Naw Khan Noorzai, who served in the 1990s, Muheddin said.
"There was a suicide incident, but we do not know what the target was," he said.
Another official said the bomb may have exploded prematurely.
Since their overthrow in 2001, the Taliban and their Islamic allies have carried out scores of suicide attacks against Afghan and foreign forces, often killing many civilians as well.
Fighting across Afghanistan is now at its worst since 2001, mostly in the south and east bordering or near Pakistan.
About 2,000 people, mostly militants, but also civilians, aid workers, Afghan and foreign soldiers, have been killed this year.
The violence is a mix of opposition to the authorities and foreign forces, the drugs trade, tribal wars and crime.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS