Taliban militants fired at least nine rockets at the Afghan capital before dawn yesterday in the biggest attack of its kind for several years, some landing near major Western embassies, police and witnesses said.
Amid a serious escalation of violence before Aug. 20 presidential elections, a provincial governor escaped unhurt after roadside bombs hit his convoy just west of the capital in an apparent assassination attempt, a spokesman said.
The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the elections and have called on Afghans to boycott the ballot, the second direct presidential poll since the Islamists were toppled by US-backed Afghan forces in 2001. Violence across Afghanistan this year had already reached its worst level since 2001 and escalated further after thousands of US Marines launched a major offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand last month.
Senior police officer Sayed Ghafar said two rockets landed in the Wazir Akbar Khan diplomatic area, home to both the US and British embassies as well as the headquarters of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. At least one rocket landed near a hospital close to the US embassy, TV pictures showed.
Residents said yesterday’s rocket attack was the biggest for several years.
It was also the first serious attack in Kabul in in this year’s upswing of violence, which has gradually spread out of Taliban strongholds in the south and east.
Meanwhile, NATO’s new civilian and military leaders are briefing members of the alliance’s decision-making North Atlantic Council on recent command changes in Afghanistan and other matters affecting the war.
The NATO secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and supreme allied commander US Admiral James Stavridis were meeting yesterday with envoys from the alliance’s 28 member states.
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
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
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