Tourists wounded in deadly Afghanistan shooting are stable: hospital

Three foreign tourists and an Afghan were killed on Friday in a shooting in the popular tourism destination of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, the interior ministry said. (X/@Jale_Akbari)
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Updated 19 May 2024
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Tourists wounded in deadly Afghanistan shooting are stable: hospital

  • According to preliminary information provided by hospital sources, the three foreigners who were killed were Spanish nationals
  • The wounded were from Norway, Australia, Lithuania and Spain

KABUL: Tourists wounded in an attack in Afghanistan which left three Spaniards and three Afghans dead were in a stable condition, a hospital said Saturday, as a survivor described the horror of the shooting in an open market.
The group was fired on while shopping in the bazaar in the mountainous city of Bamiyan, around 180 kilometers (110 miles) from the capital Kabul, on Friday.
French tourist Anne-France Brill, one of the dozen foreign travelers on an organized tour, said a gunman on foot approached the group’s vehicles and opened fire.
“There was blood everywhere,” the 55-year-old told AFP from Dubai, where she landed Saturday after being evacuated from Kabul with two Americans.
“One thing is certain,” she said, the assailant “was there for the foreigners.”
Brill, who works in marketing and lives near Paris, said she helped collect the bloodied belongings of her wounded fellow travelers before a Taliban escort brought them to the capital, where they were taken in by a European Union delegation.
The attack is believed to be the first deadly assault on foreign tourists since the Taliban returned to power in 2021 in a country where few nations have a diplomatic presence.
The bodies of those killed were transported to Kabul overnight Friday, along with the wounded and survivors, after bad weather made an airlift impossible.
Italian NGO Emergency, which operates a hospital in Kabul, received the injured who it said were from Spain, Lithuania, Norway, Australia and Afghanistan.
“The wounded people arrived at our hospital at 3:00 am (2230 GMT Friday) this morning, about 10 hours after the incident took place,” said Dejan Panic, Emergency’s country director in Afghanistan, in a statement.
“The Afghan national was the most critically injured, but all patients are now stable,” he added.
Spain’s government on Friday announced that three of the dead were Spanish tourists.
Its foreign ministry said one of the wounded was also a Spanish woman, who had been seriously injured and underwent surgery in Kabul.
The dead included three Afghans — two civilians and a Taliban member, the government’s interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said.
Local officials said the civilians were working with the tour group, while the Taliban security official had returned fire when the shooting broke out.

“Overwhelmed by the news of the murder of Spanish tourists in Afghanistan,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez posted on social media platform X.
The bodies of the dead would likely be brought back to Spain on Sunday, the country’s foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Spanish public television TVE.
Spanish diplomats were headed to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Qatar, where the Spanish ambassador to the country is currently based.
The Spanish embassy was evacuated in 2021, along with other Western missions, after the Taliban took back control of Kabul, ending a bloody decades-long insurgency against foreign forces.
Spanish authorities have also been coordinating with a European Union delegation in the capital.
Interior ministry spokesman Qani said seven suspects had been arrested, “of which one is wounded.”
“The investigation is still going on and the Islamic Emirate is seriously looking into the matter,” he added.
There has not yet been a claim of responsibility.
The EU condemned the attack “in the strongest terms.”
The United Nations mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, said it was “deeply shocked and appalled by the deadly terrorist attack” in Bamiyan, adding it had provided assistance after the incident.

The Taliban government has yet to be officially recognized by any foreign government.
It has, however, supported a fledgling tourism sector, with more than 5,000 foreign tourists visiting Afghanistan in 2023, according to official figures.
Western nations advise against all travel to the country, warning of kidnap and attack risks.
Alongside security concerns, the country has limited road infrastructure and a dilapidated health service.
Multiple foreign tourism companies offer guided package tours to Afghanistan, often including visits to highlights in cities such as Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Bamiyan.
Bamiyan is Afghanistan’s top tourist destination, once home to the giant Buddha statues that were blown up by the Taliban in 2001 during their previous rule.
The number of bombings and suicide attacks in Afghanistan has fallen dramatically since the Taliban authorities took power, and deadly attacks on foreigners are rare.
However, a number of armed groups, including the Daesh group, remain a threat.
The jihadist group has waged a campaign of attacks on foreign interests in a bid to weaken the Taliban government, targeting the Pakistani and Russian embassies as well as Chinese businessmen.
 

 


Putin says China is Russia’s ally, backs its stance on Taiwan

Updated 3 sec ago
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Putin says China is Russia’s ally, backs its stance on Taiwan

  • The two countries have not declared a formal military alliance, but have signed a ‘no limits’ partnership deal in 2022
  • Putin suggested that Taiwan was trying to stir up a Ukraine-style crisis in Asia in order to attract outside support
SOCHI, Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin described China on Thursday as Russia’s ally and threw his weight behind Beijing’s claims over Taiwan, while stating that no countries had anything to fear from deepening Sino-Russian co-operation.
The two countries have not declared a formal military alliance, but Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a “no limits” partnership deal in 2022, less than three weeks before Putin sent his troops into Ukraine.
In May this year they agreed to deepen what they called their “comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” for a new era.
“We do not believe that China is pursuing an aggressive policy in the region,” Putin said at the Valdai discussion club in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
He suggested that Taiwan was trying to stir up a Ukraine-style crisis in Asia in order to attract outside support.
China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, despite strong objections by the government in Taipei, and regularly holds wargames near the island.
“A lot is going on around Taiwan,” Putin said. “Everyone formally acknowledges, yes, Taiwan is part of China. But in reality? In reality, it is acting in a completely different direction. Provoking the situation toward escalation.
“We do support China. And because of this, we believe that (China) is conducting a completely reasonable policy. And also because it is our ally. We have a very large trade turnover, we co-operate in the security sector.”
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said China and Russia were the real problem.
“The regime of Russia’s Putin launched a war of aggression against Ukraine, leading to misery for Ukraine’s people and sanctions and condemnation from the international community,” it said in a statement.
“China and Russia together continue to undermine the rule-based international order and have become a serious threat to world peace and stability.”
Putin compared military drills between Russia and China to those the United States holds with Japan.
“These exercises do not threaten anyone,” Putin said. “They are aimed at ensuring our security.”

Swiss ‘burqa ban,’ condemned by Muslims, to take effect from Jan. 1, 2025

Updated 51 min 38 sec ago
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Swiss ‘burqa ban,’ condemned by Muslims, to take effect from Jan. 1, 2025

  • Anyone who unlawfully flouts the ban faces a fine of up to $1,144
  • Facial coverings remain permitted for reasons relating to health, safety

ZURICH: A contentious Swiss prohibition on facial coverings in public spaces widely known as the “burqa ban” will take effect on Jan. 1, the government said on Wednesday.
Narrowly passed in a 2021 referendum in neutral Switzerland, and condemned by Muslim associations, the measure was launched by the same group that organized a 2009 ban on new minarets.
The governing Federal Council said in a statement it had fixed the start of the ban, and that anyone who unlawfully flouts it faces a fine of up to 1,000 Swiss francs ($1,144).
The ban does not apply to planes or in diplomatic and consular premises, and faces may also be covered in places of worship and other sacred sites, the government said.
Facial coverings will remain permitted for reasons relating to health and safety, for native customs, or due to weather conditions, it said. They would also be allowed on artistic and entertainment grounds and for advertising, it added.
If such coverings are needed for personal protection in exercising freedom of expression and assembly, they should be permitted provided the responsible authority has already approved them and public order is not compromised, it said.
 


Two separatist militants, two government-run militia members killed in Indian-administered Kashmir

Updated 58 min 29 sec ago
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Two separatist militants, two government-run militia members killed in Indian-administered Kashmir

  • Militants in the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989
  • Many support rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as independent country

NEW DELHI: Two suspected militants were killed in a gunfight with government forces in Indian-administered Kashmir, officials said Friday, while assailants killed two members of a government-sponsored militia elsewhere in the disputed region.
The region, divided between India and Pakistan but claimed by both in its entirety, has experienced an increase in violence in recent weeks.
The Indian military said a joint team of soldiers and police raided a village near northwestern Sopore town late Thursday following a tip about the presence of a group of militants.
The militants “fired indiscriminately” at the troops, leading to a gunbattle in which two were killed, the military said in a statement.
Troops were continuing to search the area, it said. There was no independent confirmation of the incident.
Meanwhile, assailants killed two members of a government-run militia called the “Village Defense Group” in the remote southern Kishtwar area late Thursday, officials said.
Police blamed rebels fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir for the killings.
The two were abducted from a forested area where they had gone to graze cattle on Thursday. Their bodies were found late Thursday, police said.
The militia was initially formed in the 1990s as a defense against anti-India insurgents in remote Himalayan villages that government forces could not reach quickly. As the insurgency waned in their areas and as some militia members gained notoriety for brutality and rights violations, the militia was largely disbanded.
However last year, after the killing of seven Hindus in two attacks in a remote mountainous village near the highly militarized Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, authorities revived the militia and began rearming and training thousands of villagers, including some teenagers.
The Kashmir Tigers, which Indian officials say is an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group, claimed responsibility for the killings of the two in a statement on social media. The statement could not be independently verified.
Militants in the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
India insists the Kashmir militancy is “Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.” Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
 


Philippine president signs new laws to assert South China Sea rights, sovereignty

Updated 08 November 2024
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Philippine president signs new laws to assert South China Sea rights, sovereignty

  • China summons Philippine ambassador to lodge solemn representations over the new laws
  • Unclear if laws could reduce incidents with China in Manila’s exclusive economic zone

MANILA: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed two laws on Friday aimed at strengthening the country’s maritime claims and bolstering its territorial integrity, as tensions with China over disputed areas in the South China Sea persist.
The Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act would define the Philippines’ maritime entitlements and set designated sea lanes and air routes to reinforce sovereignty and maritime rights under international law.
China has summoned the Philippine ambassador to lodge solemn representations over two new laws, its foreign ministry said on Friday.
Marcos hailed the laws as a demonstration of the Philippines’ commitment to uphold an international rules-based order, and protect its rights to exploit resources peacefully in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“Our people, especially our fisher folk, should be able to pursue their livelihood free from uncertainty and harassment,” Marcos said. “We must be able to harness mineral and energy resources in our sea bed.”
While the two laws were envisioned to help US ally the Philippines to monitor and defend against potential encroachment, questions remain about how they will be enforced and if they will impact Chinese activity in the Philippine EEZ.
China asserts its claim of sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea through an armada of coast guard ships, some of which are accused by its neighbors of aggressive conduct and of trying to disrupt energy and fisheries activity in their EEZs.
Senator Francis Tolentino, one of the authors of the maritime zones measure, said he does not expect tensions in Philippine EEZ will be instantly reduced with the implementation of the new laws.
“China will not recognize these, but the imprimatur that we’ll be getting from the international community would strengthen our position,” Tolentino told a press conference.
China’s embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new laws and senator’s remarks.
Tolentino also said the laws would reinforce a 2016 arbitration ruling on the South China Sea, which declared China’s expansive claims had no basis under international law. China has rejected the 2016 decision.


Hungary PM Orban says Europe cannot finance Ukraine war alone

Updated 08 November 2024
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Hungary PM Orban says Europe cannot finance Ukraine war alone

  • Viktor Orban: ‘The Americans will quit this war, first of all they will not encourage the war’

BUDAPEST: The United States under the presidency of Donald Trump will “quit” the war in Ukraine and Europe cannot finance this war alone, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told state radio on Friday before an informal summit of EU leaders in Budapest.
“The Americans will quit this war, first of all they will not encourage the war,” Orban said. “Europe cannot finance this war alone ... some still want to continue sending enormous amounts of money into this lost war but the number of those who remain silent ...and those who cautiously voice that we should adjust to the new situation, is growing.”