KABUL: Gunmen killed at least five people and wounded eight others in an attack on Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, an official said Sunday, as the eleven hours-long siege continues.
"Five are dead," an official with the Afghan spy agency told AFP, adding 100 hostages have been released.
Gunmen attacked Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel on Saturday, seizing hostages and exchanging gunfire with security forces as the building in the Afghan capital caught fire and residents and staff fled.
Hotel manager Ahmad Haris Nayab, who escaped unhurt, said the attackers had got into the main part of the hotel through a kitchen and people tried to get out amid bursts of gunfire.
Several people had been killed and at least six wounded in the raid, which came days after a US embassy warning of possible attacks on hotels in Kabul, Nasrat Rahimi, an interior ministry spokesman, said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest in a long series of attacks which underlined the city’s precarious situation and the ability of militants to strike blows to undermine confidence in the Western-backed government.
Officials said there were as many as four attackers and at least two of them had been killed as Afghan Special Forces cleared the first floor and moved to the second, battling the raiders, who appeared to have a large supply of hand grenades.
According to one witness, who did not want to be named, the attackers took some hotel staff and guests hostage.
The Intercontinental Hotel, located on a hilltop and heavily protected like most public buildings in Kabul, was previously attacked by Taliban fighters in 2011.
It is one of two main luxury hotels in the city and had been due to host an information technology conference on Sunday. More than 100 IT managers and engineers were on site when the attack took place, Ahmad Waheed, an official at the telecommunications ministry, said.
US WARNING
Many details of the incident were still unclear, but Interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish said a private company had taken over security about three weeks ago.
The US embassy in Kabul had issued a warning to US citizens on Thursday, saying “We are aware of reports that extremist groups may be planning an attack against hotels in Kabul.”
The State Department said it was monitoring the situation and was in contact with Afghan authorities to determine whether any US citizens had been affected.
Captain Tom Gresback, spokesman for the NATO-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan said they were also watching closely. “Afghan National Defense and Security Forces are leading the response efforts. According to initial reports, no Resolute Support or (US forces) members were injured in this incident,” he said in an emailed statement.
Although the NATO-led Resolute Support mission says the Taliban has come under pressure after the United States increased assistance to Afghan security forces and stepped up air strikes against insurgents, security remains precarious.
As pressure on the battlefield has increased, security officials have warned that the danger of attacks on high profile targets in Kabul and other cities would increase.
After repeated attacks in Kabul, notably an incident last May in which a truck bomber killed at least 150 people outside the German embassy, security has been further tightened.
While it shares the same name, the hotel in Kabul is not part of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which issued a statement in 2011 saying that “the hotel Inter-continental in Kabul is not part of IHG and has not been since 1980.”
(With Reuters, AFP)
At least five dead in Kabul hotel attack: Afghan spy agency
At least five dead in Kabul hotel attack: Afghan spy agency
UK farmers plan to protest at Parliament over a tax hike they say will ruin family farms
- The Labour Party government says only a small number of farms each year will be affected
- Some farmers have welcomed those moves, but many feel goodwill was squandered through missteps by successive governments
UK farmers are rarely as militant as their European neighbors, and Britain has not seen large-scale protests like those that have snarled cities in France and other European countries. Now, though, farmers say they will step up their action if the government doesn’t listen.
“Everyone’s mad,” said Olly Harrison, co-organizer of a protest that aims to flood the street outside Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office with farmers. He said many famers “want to take to the streets and block roads and go full French.”
Organizers have urged protesters not to bring farm machinery into central London on Tuesday. Instead, children on toy tractors will lead a march around Parliament Square after a rally addressed by speakers including former “Top Gear” TV host and celebrity farmer Jeremy Clarkson. Another 1,800 farmers plan to hold a “mass lobby” of lawmakers nearby, organized by the National Farmers’ Union.
Volatile weather exacerbated by climate change, global instability and the upheaval caused by Britain’s 2020 departure from the European Union have all added to the burden on UK farmers. Many feel the Labour Party government’s tax change, part of an effort to raise billions of pounds to fund public services, is the last straw.
“Four out of the last five years, we’ve lost money,” said Harrison, who grows cereal crops on his family farm near Liverpool in northwest England. “The only thing that’s kept me going is doing it for my kids. And maybe a little bit of appreciation on the land allows you to keep borrowing, to keep going. But now that’s just disappeared overnight.”
The flashpoint is the government’s decision in its budget last month to scrap a tax break dating from the 1990s that exempts agricultural property from inheritance tax. From April 2026, farms worth more than 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) face a 20 percent tax when the owner dies and they are passed on to the next generation. That is half the 40 percent inheritance tax rate levied on other land and property in the UK
Starmer’s center-left government says the “vast majority” of farms – about 75 percent — will not be affected, and various loopholes mean that a farming couple can pass on an estate worth up to 3 million pounds ($3.9 million) to their children free of tax.
Supporters of the tax say it will recoup money from wealthy people who have bought up agricultural land as an investment, driving up the cost of farmland in the process.
“It’s become the most effective way for the super-rich to avoid paying their inheritance tax,” Environment Secretary Steve Reed wrote in the Daily Telegraph, adding that high land prices were “robbing young farmers of the dream of owning their own farm.”
But the famers’ union says more than 60 percent of working farms could face a tax hit. And while farms may be worth a lot on paper, profits are often small. Government figures show that income for most types of farms fell in the year to the end of February 2024, in some cases by more than 70 percent. Average farm income ranged from about 17,000 pounds ($21,000) for grazing livestock farms to 143,000 pounds ($180,000) for specialist poultry farms.
The last decade has been turbulent for British farmers. Many farmers backed Brexit as a chance to get out of the EU’s complex and much-criticized Common Agricultural Policy. Since then, the UK has brought in changes such as paying farmers to restore nature and promote biodiversity, as well as for producing food.
Some farmers have welcomed those moves, but many feel goodwill was squandered through missteps by successive governments, a failure of subsidies to keep up with inflation and new trade deals with countries including Australia and New Zealand that have opened the door to cheap imports.
National Farmers’ Union Deputy President David Exwood said the tax hike was “the final straw in a succession of tough choices and difficult situations that farmers have had to deal with.”
The government has “completely blown their trust with the industry,” he said.
The government insists it will not reconsider the inheritance tax, and its political opponents see an opportunity. The main opposition Conservative Party – which was in government for 14 years until July — and the hard-right populist party Reform UK are both championing the farmers. Some far-right groups also have backed Tuesday’s protest, though the organizers are not affiliated with them.
Harrison says the demonstration is intended as “a show of unity to the government” and an attempt to inform the public “that farmers are food producers, not tax-dodging millionaires.”
“It’s every single sector, whether you’re a landowner or a tenant, whether you’re beef, dairy, milk, cereals, veg, lettuce — you name it, everyone has had a hammer blow from this,” he said.
“Every farmer is losing.”
7 policemen kidnapped by armed men in northwest Pakistan
PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen abducted seven policemen from a check post on Monday in Pakistan’s northwestern district of Bannu, police said, as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province battles a rise in militant attacks on cops and other government officials.
Pakistan’s northwest has seen a rise in militant attacks in recent months, which Islamabad says are mostly carried out by Afghan nationals and their facilitators and by Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militant groups who cross over into Pakistan using safe haven in Afghanistan.
The Taliban government in Kabul says Pakistan’s security challenges are a domestic issue and cannot be blamed on the neighbor.
Police data shows 75 policemen have been killed and 113 injured in militant attacks and targeted assassinations in 2024 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.
“Armed men abducted seven police personnel from the Rocha checkpoint in the jurisdiction of Utmanzai Police Station in Bannu district,” District Police Officer (DPO) Zia Uddin told Arab News, saying up to 40 gunmen first surrounded the checkpoint in the mountainous area of Sub-Division Wazir on Monday evening.
“The armed men abducted seven police personnel from the Rocha checkpoint in the jurisdiction of Utmanzai Police Station in Bannu district.”
The militants also took away all weapons and equipment at the checkpoint.
“Four police personnel escaped as they were not present at the location at the time,” the DPO added.
The Pakistani government and security officials have said repeatedly that such attacks have risen in recent months, many of them claimed by the TTP and launched from Afghan soil.
The TTP is separate from the Afghan Taliban movement, but pledges loyalty to the Islamist group that now rules Afghanistan after US-led international forces withdrew in 2021.
Islamabad says TTP uses Afghanistan as a base and says the ruling Taliban administration has provided safe havens to the group close to the border. The Taliban deny this.
- This article is also available on Arab News Pakistan
Toxic smog persists over India’s north; Delhi pollution remains severe
NEW DELHI: Residents in India’s northern states woke up to another day of poor air quality on Tuesday, as a layer of dense fog shrouded most of the region, and pollution in the capital Delhi remained severe.
India battles air pollution every winter as cold, heavy air traps dust, emissions, and smoke from farm fires started illegally in the adjoining, farming states of Punjab and Haryana.
The air quality index (AQI) touched a peak of 491 in Delhi on Monday, forcing the government to introduce restrictions on vehicle movement and construction activities, and schools to conduct classes online.
On Tuesday, Delhi’s 24-hour air quality index (AQI) reading was at 488 on a scale of 500, India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said, and at least five stations in the capital reported an AQI of 500.
CPCB defines an AQI reading of 0-50 as “good” and above 401 as “severe,” which it says is a risk to healthy people and “seriously impacts” those with existing diseases.
Swiss group IQAir ranked New Delhi as the world’s most polluted city with air quality at a “hazardous” 489, although that was a significant improvement from Monday’s 1,081 reading.
Experts say the scores vary because of a difference in the scale countries adopt to convert pollutant concentrations into AQI, and so the same quantity of a specific pollutant may be translated as different AQI scores in different countries.
India’s weather department said a shift in the fog layer toward the northern state of Uttar Pradesh had helped improve visibility over Delhi.
Visibility dropped to zero meters in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Agra, which lies southeast of Delhi. The Taj Mahal, India’s famed monument of love, has been obscured by toxic smog for nearly a week.
The strict measures to mitigate the impact of high pollution have hurt production at more than 3.4 million micro, small and medium enterprises in the nearby states of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, local media reported.
42,000 crowd New Zealand’s Parliament grounds in support of Māori rights
- For many, it was about something more: a celebration of a resurging Indigenous language and identity that colonization had once almost destroyed
WELLINGTON, New Zealand: As tens of thousands of marchers crowded the streets in New Zealand’s capital Wellington on Tuesday, the throng of people, flags aloft, had the air of a festival or a parade rather than a protest.
They arrived to oppose a law that would reshape the county’s founding treaty between Indigenous Māori and the British Crown.
But for many, it was about something more: a celebration of a resurging Indigenous language and identity that colonization had once almost destroyed.
“Just fighting for the rights that our tūpuna, our ancestors, fought for,” Shanell Bob said as she waited for the march to begin. “We’re fighting for our tamariki, for our mokopuna, so they can have what we haven’t been able to have,” she added, using the Māori words for children and grandchildren.
What was likely the country’s largest-ever protest in support of Māori rights — a subject that has preoccupied modern New Zealand for much of its young history — followed a long tradition of peaceful marches the length of the country that have marked turning points in the history of modern New Zealand.
“We’re going for a walk!” One organizer proclaimed from the stage as crowds gathered at the opposite end of the city from the nation’s Parliament. Some had traveled the length of the country over the past nine days.
For many, the turnout reflected growing solidarity on Indigenous rights from non-Māori. At bus stops during the usual morning commute, people of all ages and races waited with Māori sovereignty flags. Some local schools said they would not register students as absent. The city’s mayor joined the protest.
The bill that marchers were opposing is unpopular and unlikely to become law. But opposition to it has exploded, which marchers said indicated rising knowledge of the Treaty of Waitangi’s promises to Māori among New Zealanders — and a small but vocal backlash from those who are angered by attempts by courts and lawmakers to keep them.
Māori marching for their rights as outlined in the treaty is not new. But the crowds were larger than at treaty marches before and mood was changed, Indigenous people said.
“It’s different to when I was a child,” Bob said. “We’re stronger now, our tamariki are stronger now, they know who they are, they’re proud of who they are.”
As the marchers moved through the streets of Wellington with ringing Māori haka — rhythmic chants — and waiata, or songs, thousands more holding signs lined the pavement in support.
Some placards bore jokes or insults about the lawmakers responsible for the bill, which would change the meaning of the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and prevent them from applying only to Māori — whose chiefs signed the document when New Zealand was colonized.
But others read “proud to be Māori” or acknowledged the bearer’s heritage as a non-Māori person endorsing the protest. Some denounced the widespread expropriation of Māori land during colonization, one of the main grievances arising from the treaty.
“The treaty is a document that lets us be here in Aotearoa so holding it up and respecting it is really important,” said Ben Ogilvie, who is of Pākehā or New Zealand European descent, using the Māori name for the country. “I hate what this government is doing to tear it down.”
Police said 42,000 people tried to crowd into Parliament’s grounds, with some spilling into the surrounding streets. People crammed themselves onto the children’s slide on the lawn for a vantage point; others perched in trees. The tone was almost joyful; as people waited to leave the cramped area, some struck up Māori songs that most New Zealanders learn at school.
A sea of Māori sovereignty flags in red, black and white stretched down the lawn and into the streets. But marchers bore Samoan, Tongan, Indigenous Australian, US, Palestinian and Israeli flags, too. At Parliament, speeches from political leaders drew attention to the reason for the protest — a proposed law that would change the meaning of words in the country’s founding treaty, cement them in law and extend them to everyone.
Its author, libertarian lawmaker David Seymour — who is Māori — says the process of redress for decades of Crown breaches of its treaty with Māori has created special treatment for Indigenous people, which he opposes.
The bill’s detractors say it would spell constitutional upheaval, dilute Indigenous rights, and has provoked divisive rhetoric about Māori — who are still disadvantaged on almost every social and economic metric, despite attempts by the courts and lawmakers in recent decades to rectify inequities caused in large part by breaches of the treaty.
It is not expected to ever become law, but Seymour made a political deal that saw it shepherded through a first vote last Thursday. In a statement Tuesday, he said the public could now make submissions on the bill — which he hopes will reverse in popularity and experience a swell of support.
Seymour briefly walked out onto Parliament’s forecourt to observe the protest, although he was not among the lawmakers invited to speak. Some in the crowd booed him.
The protest was “a long time coming,” said Papa Heta, one of the marchers, who said Māori sought acknowledgement and respect.
“We hope that we can unite with our Pākehā friends, Europeans,” he added. “Unfortunately there are those that make decisions that put us in a difficult place.”
Hong Kong jails 45 democracy activists in landmark national security trial
- Activists charged with subversion over unofficial ‘primary election’
- Organizers had faced up to life in prison under national security laws
- US criticizes trial as politically motivated, calls for activists’ release
HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s High Court on Tuesday sentenced 45 pro-democracy activists to jail terms of up to 10 years in a landmark national security trial that has damaged the city’s once feisty democracy movement and drawn international condemnation.
A total of 47 pro-democracy activists were arrested and charged in 2021 with conspiracy to commit subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law and had faced sentences of up to life in prison.
Benny Tai, a former legal scholar identified as an “organizer” of the activists, was sentenced to 10 years in jail, the longest sentence so far under the 2020 national security law.
Some Western governments have criticized the trial, with the US describing it as “politically motivated” and saying the democrats should be released as they had been “peacefully participating in political activities” that were legal.
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments say the national security laws were necessary to restore order after mass pro-democracy protests in 2019, and the democrats have been treated in accordance with local laws.
Closely watched trial
The charges related to the organizing of an unofficial “primary election” in 2020 to select the best candidates for an upcoming legislative election. The activists were accused by prosecutors of plotting to paralyze the government by engaging in potentially disruptive acts had they been elected.
After a 118 day trial, 14 of the democrats were found guilty in May, including Australian citizen Gordon Ng and activist Owen Chow, while two were acquitted. The other 31 pleaded guilty.
Sentences ranged from just over four years to 10 years.
Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong was sentenced to four years and eight months in jail, while Chow was sentenced to seven years and nine months; former journalist-turned-activist Gwyneth Ho, was sentenced to seven years.
Elsa Wu, the mother of Hendrick Lui, who was sentenced to more than four years in jail, was taken away in a police van outside the courtroom and shouted: “He’s a good person … he’s not a political prisoner … why does he have to go to jail?”
She screamed before police slammed the van door.
Hundreds of people had queued from the early hours outside the court, many holding umbrellas in light rain as they tried to secure a seat within the main courtroom and several spillover courts.
Authorities deployed a tight police presence outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court and for several blocks in the vicinity.
“I feel such an injustice needs witnessing,” said one woman who gave her name as Margaret and had been in the queue since Sunday afternoon. “I’ve long followed their case. They (the democrats) need to know they still have public support.”
The ruling, which critics have said tarnishes Hong Kong’s role as a global financial hub, comes as the city is hosting an international financial summit to attract more business.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee as secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has been a staunch critic of the trial and in an earlier open letter criticized the convictions of the 47 democrats as evidence of the national security law’s “comprehensive assault on Hong Kong’s autonomy, rule of law, and fundamental freedoms.”
Britain, which handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, has said the 2020 security law has been used to curb dissent and freedom.
