BBC News – Suicide bomber hits Afghan defence ministry in Kabul

Saturday 9 March 2013. A suicide bomb attack on the Afghan defence ministry in Kabul has killed at least nine people, as the new US Pentagon chief visited the city.

A further 20 people were wounded by the bomber, who was on a bicycle, security officials told BBC News.

Taliban insurgents said they were behind the attack.

Reports are coming in of a separate suicide bomb attack, near the city of Khost, in which eight children and a policeman are said to have been killed.

At the time of the Kabul blast, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel was in a briefing at a US-led military facility elsewhere in Kabul.

Kabul police chief Mohammad Zahir told the BBC ambulances had taken the injured to several hospitals and that the situation was under control.

Two of the wounded were Afghan army soldiers while all of the dead and other injured were civilians, an Afghan defence official told BBC News.

One woman was among those killed.

The attacker struck just before 09:00 (04:30 GMT), about 30m (yds) from the main gate of the ministry.

A man at the scene, Abdul Ghafoor, said the blast had rocked the entire area.

“I saw [dead] bodies and wounded victims lying everywhere,” he told the Associated Press news agency.

“Then random shooting started and we escaped from the area.”

In an email, the Taliban said it had carried out the attack and had targeted one of the entrances used by soldiers and officers.

“The attack happened during the trip of the US defence secretary, and the attack had a message for him,” the statement added.

Earlier, Mr Hagel, who became defence secretary last week, told reporters travelling with him he wanted to see for himself “where we are in Afghanistan”.

“I need to better understand what’s going on,” he said.

There are currently about 66,000 US military personal in the country and early next year that figure will drop to 34,000.

The question of how many international troops will remain after 2014 is still unknown.

‘Boys killed’

Saturday’s other reported attack occurred outside Khost, a city 150km (93 miles) south-east of Kabul.

A policeman spotted the suicide bomber, who was on foot, as he prepared to attack a joint patrol close to the US military’s Camp Salerno base, a police spokesman told BBC News.

The policeman hugged the attacker to himself in an attempt to save lives, Khost deputy police chief Mohammad Yaqub Mandozay said.

However, boys aged 12 to 14 who were working in nearby fields were caught in the explosion, The region around Khost has been a stronghold of the Haqqani militant network, which has launched deadly attacks on Afghan and international forces, the BBC’s Bilal Sarwary reports.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21724059

Dawn – Suicide bombing, gunfire rock Kabul

Kabul, 21 January 2013. A suicide car-bombing followed by several other explosions and gunfire rocked western Kabul around dawn on Monday, police and witnesses said, as Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack.

A large pall of smoke was rising from the vicinity of a police complex on the road to the parliament and the road had been sealed off, residents in the area told AFP.

A local police official told AFP the first large explosion was a suicide car bomb and was followed by several other blasts and gunfire.

“A group of terrorists, two or three or four, tried to enter the traffic police building, Kabul CID Chief Mohammad Zahir said.

“Two of the bombers were shot dead at the entrance and one has likely entered the building and is shooting sporadically. Our security forces are in the area.” A witness said the top floor of the building was on fire.

He said the initial explosion “very very big — it was massive”, and was followed by several other explosions and gunfire.

“There are firefighter trucks, ambulances and police all over the place.

The gunfire comes from that direction and the building’s top floors are on fire,” he said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP in an SMS message that the insurgents were behind the attack.

“Today at around 5:00 am a large number of fedayeen (suicide bombers) entered a building in Dehmazang and are attacking an American training centre, a police centre and other military centres and have caused heavy casualties on the enemy,” he said.

Last Wednesday, a squad of suicide bombers attacked the Afghan intelligence agency headquarters in heavily fortified central Kabul, killing at least one guard and wounding dozens of civilians.

All six attackers were killed in that brazen midday attack on the National Directorate of Security (NDS).

http://dawn.com/2013/01/21/suicide-bombing-gunfire-rock-kabul/

Sangat TV – Harbans Singh and Dr Amarnath Kakkar discuss cremation issue in Kabul

Kabul – Bringing the body to cremation ground
Picture provided by Pritpal Singh

In this http://youtu.be/VcGgqr95eew talk-show at Sangat Television’s London Studio, Harbans Singh and Dr Amarnath Kakkar, both experts on Afghanistan, discussed the Cremation Issues faced by minorities in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Kabul, 16th November 2012

The dead body of Mrs Hari Kaur, resident of Shorbazar who passed away was taken to the Cremation Grounds in Qalacha-e-Ben-e-Hesar locality of Kabul for cremation. Residents of the neighbourhood where the Cremation Ground is located did not allow the cremation to take place.

Sikhs & Hindus once again demonstrated and only under Police protection and with media attention the cremation took place at 4 PM local time. Sikhs and Hindus along with their representatives and Afghan civilian government have yet to find a permanent solution to this pressing problem.

Written by Pritpal Singh — The Dutch Sikh
https://www.facebook.com/TheDutchSikh

Published on:

http://www.sikh24.com/2012/11/sikhs-barred-from-cremating-in-afghanistan/

http://thelinkpaper.ca/?p=24341

Also watch Video report by BBC Pashto:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pashto/multimedia/2012/11/121117_hh-hindus-af.shtml

BBC News – ‘Eight insurgents killed’ in Kabul gun battle

Thursday 2 August 2012. Afghan officials say eight insurgents believed to have been planning attacks in central Kabul have been killed in a gun battle.

Security personnel raided a house in the east of the city and fighting broke out in the early hours of Thursday.

The battle continued for six hours. Dozens of homes were evacuated and vehicles containing explosives were also found at the scene.

The raid involved Afghan forces acting on a tip-off, officials said.

Officials say three vehicles packed with explosives have been seized from insurgents along with suicide vests and other weapons, the BBC’s Bilal Sarwary in Kabul reports.

Three insurgents with remote controls and directions for sophisticated attacks in different parts of the city were arrested last night, Kabul police chief General Mohammad Ayub Salangi told the BBC.

“This was a really big plan. Thank God we were able to stop it,” intelligence agency spokesman Latifullah Mashal told the Associated Press.

The Taliban has denied that its fighters were involved in the battle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19090416

The Asian Age – Taliban publicly execute woman near Kabul: Officials

Kabul, 8 July 2012. A man Afghan officials say is a member of the Taliban shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul, a video obtained by Reuters showed, a sign that the austere Islamist group dictates law even near the Afghan capital.

In the three-minute video, a turban-clad man approaches a woman kneeling in the dirt and shoots her five times at close range with an automatic rifle, to cheers of jubilation from the 150 or so men watching in a village in Parwan province.

“Allah warns us not to get close to adultery because it’s the wrong way,” another man says as the shooter gets closer to the woman. “It is the order of Allah that she be executed”.

Provincial Governor Basir Salangi said the video, obtained on Saturday, was shot a week ago in the village of Qimchok in Shinwari district, about an hour’s drive from Kabul.

Such rare public punishment was a painful reminder to Afghan authorities of the Taliban’s 1996-2001 period in power, and it raised concern about the treatment of Afghan women 11 years into the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents.

“When I saw this video, I closed my eyes … The woman was not guilty; the Taliban are guilty,” Salangi told Reuters.

When the unnamed woman, most of her body tightly wrapped in a shawl, fell sideways after being shot several times in the head, the spectators chanted: “Long live the Afghan mujahideen! (Islamist fighters)”, a name the Taliban use for themselves.

The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

Despite the presence of over 130,000 foreign troops and 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, the Taliban have managed to resurge beyond their traditional bastions of the south and east, extending their reach into once more peaceful areas like Parwan.

Hard-won women’s rights in jeopardy ?

Afghan women have won back basic rights in education, voting and work since the Taliban, who deemed them un-Islamic for women, were toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.

But fears are rising among Afghan women, some lawmakers and rights activists that such freedoms could be traded away as the Afghan government and the United States pursue talks with the Taliban to secure a peaceful end to the war.

Violence against women has increased sharply in the past year, according to Afghanistan’s independent human rights commission. Activists say there is waning interest in women’s rights on the part of President Hamid Karzai’s government.

“After 10 years (of foreign intervention), and only a few kilometres from Kabul… how could this happen in front of all these people?” female lawmaker Fawzia Koofi said of the public execution in Parwan.

“This is happening under a government that claims to have made so much progress in women’s rights, claims to have changed women’s lives, and this is unacceptable. It is a huge step backwards,” said Koofi, a campaigner for girls’ education who wants to run in the 2014 presidential election.

Salangi said two Taliban commanders were sexually involved with the woman in Parwan, either through rape or romantically, and decided to torture her and then kill her to settle a dispute between the two of them.

“They are outlaws, murderers, and like savages they killed the woman,” he said, adding that the Taliban exerted considerable sway in his province.

Earlier this week a 30-year-old woman and two of her children were beheaded in eastern Afghanistan by a man police said was her divorced husband, the latest of a string of so-called “honour killings”.

Some Afghans still refer to Taliban courts for settling disputes, viewing government bodies as corrupt or unreliable. The courts use sharia (Islamic law), which prescribes punishments such as stonings and executions. (Reuters)

http://www.asianage.com/international/taliban-publicly-execute-woman-near-kabul-officials-204

You Tube – Afghan Sikhs protesting because of issues with performing the last rites of their dead ones in Kabul

The locals close to Cremation Ground (Shamshan Ghat) in Kabul won’t let them burn their dead in heavily concentrated urban areas; due to the odour burning flesh creates.

In this report it is shown that, under Police protection and Administrative Authority, Sikhs eventually managed to cremate the dead person, however the problem still persists.

Sikhs and Hindus along with their representatives and Afghan civilian government have yet to find a permanent solution to this pressing problem.

Watch this report in Dari & Pashtoon TV station of Afghanistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAwqegjuZZA

BBC News – Afghan President Karzai cancels UK trip after bombings

6 December 2011

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has cancelled a visit to the UK to return to Afghanistan, after Tuesday’s deadly attacks in the capital, Kabul, and in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The twin attacks apparently targeting Shia Muslims killed at least 58 people.

A suicide bomb struck a Kabul shrine, killing at least 54, while the other blast struck near a Shia mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif at about the same time.

The attacks seemed to be sectarian, raising fears of new violence.

Mr Karzai was in Germany on Tuesday evening after attending the international conference on his country in Bonn, and was later due to travel to the UK for talks with UK Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday.

He said earlier it was “the first time that on such an important religious day in Afghanistan terrorism of that horrible nature is taking place”.

The blasts coincided with the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura – the most important day in the Shia calendar which is marked with a public holiday in Afghanistan.

Ashura is the climax of Muharram, the month of mourning for the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson.

Though tensions exist between Afghanistan’s Sunni and minority Shia Muslims, most attacks in Afghanistan in recent years have targeted government officials or international forces, correspondents say.

Violence of the type seen in Pakistan or Iraq is rare, the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says.

Pakistan boycotted the Bonn conference after a Nato attack killed 24 of its troops at a checkpoint near the Afghan border last month.

Afghan security officials held their breath during the conference, our correspondent says, fearing there might an attack in Kabul to divert attention.

‘Unprecedented’

The near-simultaneous explosions happened at about midday (07:30 GMT).

In Kabul, the bomb went off near a gathering of hundreds of Shias singing at the Abu Fazal shrine, killing 54 people and injuring 150.

No-one had claimed to have carried out the attacks, said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul’s criminal investigation department.

A Taliban statement said the group had not been behind either incident.

Mohammad Bakir Shaikzada, the top Shia cleric in Kabul, said he could not remember a similar attack on such a scale.

Police said they foiled another attack elsewhere in the capital.

The bomb which exploded near the main mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif was apparently strapped to a bicycle, and went off shortly after the Kabul blast.

Four people were killed and 17 injured in that attack.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16059147