[Aljazeera] Separate bomb explosions in Afghanistan killed at least three people including a child and wounded 20 others on Sunday, Afghan officials said.
Kabul police spokesman Ferdaws Faramarz said a roadside bomb targeted a police car, killing the driver and a nearby child. Five other civilians including children were wounded.
The second blast was caused by a bomb placed in a crowded market in southern Helmand province, killing one civilian and wounding 15 others including two police, said provincial police spokesman, Mohammad Zaman Hamdard.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for any of the attacks. Afghan police officials said that an investigation was under way.
Bombings and assassinations have occurred on a near-daily basis in the capital, Kabul, in recent months, targeting Afghan security forces, civilian government employees, journalists, religious scholars and civil society activists.
Many of the attacks have used sticky bombs — explosive devices with magnets that are attached to vehicles and detonated by remote control or timer.
On Saturday, at least five people were killed after three back-to-back explosions rocked various parts of the city.
Afghan security forces inspect the site of a bomb blast in Kabul, Afghanistan, February 21, 2021 [Omar Sobhani/Reuters]
The ISIL (ISIS) group’s local affiliate has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, but many go unclaimed, with the government blaming the Taliban.
The Taliban has denied responsibility for most of the attacks.
In the Doha agreement signed in February 2020, the Taliban committed to peace talks with the Afghan government and to significantly reduce violence. As part of the deal, the United States pledged to withdraw all international troops by April this year.
However, violent conflict has continued in Afghanistan, making it difficult to implement the agreement. The new US administration under President Joe Biden is reviewing the withdrawal plan.
There are about 2,500 US troops and 10,000 NATO soldiers in Afghanistan now.
[KhaamaPress] A police ranger-type vehicle was targeted by a kaboom in Baraki square PD4 of Kabul city.
According to police, the incident occurred at around 4:22 pm local time on Sunday.
"Terrorists" detonated a roadside kaboom in the area, police told media.
Kabul police stated at least two people including a child worker were killed and five others were maimed in the blast. A woman and two of her children are also among the maimed individuals.
In another incident, Police chief of PD5 was targeted in an roadside kaboom blast, he has reportedly survived but a civilian was maimed in the attack.
No group or individual so far grabbed credit for the attacks.
Meanwhile, ...back at the comedy club, Boogie sadly admitted that he was a better peeping Tom than he was a comedian... a kaboom in Lashkargah left one person dead and 10 others maimed in southern Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province.
One person was killed and 14 more were wounded in a blast that hit a car in Lashkargah city, capital of Helmand province, on Sunday morning, said hospital officials.
The incident occurred around 10:00 am local time in Lashkargah city, local officials said, who confirmed that one person was killed and others--including civilians--were wounded.
Local officials did not provide further details about the incident.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast.
[KhaamaPress] In a phone conversation with Afghan soldiers on Saturday, President Ghani reportedly said that the Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... will not get an interim government and that he is ready for threats of the Taliban.
"As long as I am alive, they will not see the face of an interim government," President Ghani said.
This comes as National Security Adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, reacted to remarks by a Russian special envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov saying that the interim government plan is not useful for the country.
While addressing a presser, Mohib said that such remarks shouldn’t be made and added that the Taliban don’t want peace and are not willing to lose their prosperous lives in Doha.
According to Mohib Taliban leadership "don’t want peace" in the country and "Taliban leadership have prosperous lives in Doha, they do not want to lose it" Ariana news quoted Mohib.
Meanwhile, ...back at the laboratory the smoke and fumes had dispersed, to reveal an ominous sight... Afghan defense officials said that NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... ’s support to Afghan National Army indicates that the Taliban are not ready to make peace,
Deputy Minister of Defense, Shah Mahmood Miakhel added that the NATO defense ministerial meeting indicates that the world believes the Taliban are not committed to peace.
Head of National Directorate, Ahmad Zia Saraj in his turn said 20 terrorist groups in Afghanistan operate under the direct supervision of the Taliban, and this has raised complexity in the war.
[AlAhram] Libya's powerful interior minister in the UN-recognised government
...the journalist means the old Government of National Accord (GNA). But the GNA has been officially superseded by the temporary unity government headed by PM Abdelhamid Debaiba, which was negotiated over the past few months under the auspices of the UN and with the agreement of Khalifa Haftar, field marshal of the Libyan National Army (LNA). This explains why Mr. Bashagha hasn’t been mentioned in the Libya Review since last September...
on Sunday escaped an liquidation attempt on a highway near the capital Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... , an official from his inner circle told AFP.
The convoy of Fathi Bashagha "was fired on from an armoured car while he was on the highway. His police escort returned fire. Two of the assailants were arrested and a third is in hospital,’' the source said, adding that "the minister is fine.’’
Good to know. It wouldn’t do to start creating martyrs from the dispossessed at this stage of the proceedings.
[AnNahar] A jihadist attack in northeast Nigeria ... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border... has forced many people to flee after Islamic state-affiliated bully boyz overran a key army base, military sources and residents told AFP Sunday.
[AnNahar] Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... 's Saudi-backed government accused Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... s Saturday of using civilians as human shields in their renewed offensive against its last major toehold in the north.
Earlier this month, the Iran-backed rebels resumed a push to capture the city of Marib, 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of the rebel-held capital Sanaa. The city lies close to some of Yemen's richest oil fields and its capture would be major prize for the rebels.
But the fighting has raised fears for the hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians sheltering in camps in the surrounding desert that extends to the Saudi border.
Loyalist military officials told AFP the rebels had been using residents of al-Zor camp in the province's Sirwah district as "human shields" since their capture of the area last week.
The officials said there had been no let-up in the fighting.
Over the past 24 hours, at least 12 loyalist and 20 rebel fighters had been killed in festivities north and west of Marib, they said.
There was no way to independently verify the corpse count but it is clear that both sides have suffered heavy casualties in the renewed battle for the city.
Until early last year, Marib had been spared the worst of the civil war that erupted in 2014.
The International Committee of the Red Thingy has said it is "extremely concerned" by the recent fighting.
"The ICRC urges all parties to the conflict to take every possible measure to protect the civilians, their properties and all civilian essential infrastructures," it said on Twitter.
The UN has warned of the potential for a humanitarian disaster.
"It puts millions of civilians at risk, especially with the fighting reaching camps for internally displaced persons," envoy Martin Griffiths told the UN Security Council.
The Huthi offensive came as the new US administration removed the rebels from Washington's blacklist of terrorist organizations in a bid to facilitate aid deliveries to rebel-held areas and pave the way for renewed peace talks.
President Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden ...Failed seeker of the Democratic presidential nomination on multiple occasions, vice president under Barack Obama, giving it a last try in his dotage for 2020... has also announced an end to US backing for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen, which he said had created a "humanitarian and strategic catastrophe."
Observers say the Huthis want to capture Marib to strengthen their hand in eventual peace negotiations.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.