Trump’s ban on the visa lottery was ruled to be illegal, but the government says it can’t help hundreds of Afghans who won it for at least another year.
After 25 people were killed, a historical hotel is open for business, cutting prices to entice guests to stay the night
Syed Ali was playing on the roof of his mud-brick house when the killers came for Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai last week. Karzai survived the attack on Kabul’s broad parade ground. Ten-year-old Syed Ali, a kilometre away watching his mother cleaning almond shells to supplement the family’s winter fuel, died, with two others, when he was hit by a stray bullet.
A suspected suicide bomber killed 15 Afghans and wounded 14 more in eastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan on Tuesday, a Nato spokesperson said. The Taliban have vowed to step up suicide attacks this year to undermine the faith of Afghans in the ability of their government to provide security.
The new United Nations envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, arrived in Kabul on Friday with a pledge to improve coordination with President Hamid Karzai’s government. ”The Afghan government has asked for that for a very long time and we have to respond in a better way than we have managed so far,” said Eide.
A suicide car bomber killed eight Afghan civilians in an attack on United States troops near the airport in Afghanistan’s capital on Thursday, a Nato spokesperson said. Thirty-five civilians were wounded in the attack, but the four US soldiers inside the two vehicles targeted suffered only minor cuts and bruises.
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/ 18 February 2008
A suicide bomber targeting a military convoy in Afghanistan killed 35 people in an attack near the Pakistan border on Monday. The attack, a day after more than 100 people were killed in the deadliest suicide raid since 2001, comes as some Western politicians call for a stronger resolve to stop Afghanistan sliding back into anarchy.
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/ 17 February 2008
A suicide bomber killed more than 80 people at a picnic spot in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Sunday in the most deadly attack since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, the government said. The attack will add urgency to a debate about how the United States and Afghanistan’s other allies can help stem militant violence and promote stability.
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/ 16 February 2008
Two-thirds of the Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan can be persuaded to abandon violence, according to a British aid worker expelled from the country for opening talks with some of those allied to the militant group. Michael Semple said he was confident that most Taliban-linked insurgents could be absorbed into Afghanistan’s reconciliation process.
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/ 12 February 2008
Pakistani security forces wounded and captured a prominent Taliban commander on Monday near the border area with Afghanistan. Mullah Mansour Dadullah took over as commander of Taliban forces in the southern Afghan province of Helmand after his brother, Mullah Dadullah, was killed by British forces in May.
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/ 16 January 2008
Cold weather and heavy snow have killed more than 100 people and more than 35 000 head of cattle in the past week across Afghanistan, officials said on Wednesday. Several major roads have also been blocked by avalanches and hundreds of people have been affected by bad weather, they said.
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/ 27 December 2007
United Nations officials were on Wednesday night working to prevent the expulsion from Afghanistan of two senior Western diplomats who have been accused of holding illegal talks with Taliban leaders in the British theatre of operations in the southern province of Helmand.
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/ 25 December 2007
Christians around the world celebrated Christmas on Tuesday as the Catholic leader in the Holy Land pleaded for peace in the Middle East and Pope Benedict XVI spoke against selfishness. Iraqi Christians meanwhile celebrated a fearful Christmas in the shadow of suicide bombings and sectarian violence.
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/ 5 December 2007
A suicide bomber targeted a bus carrying Afghan army personnel in Kabul on Wednesday, killing six military staff and seven civilians, a defence ministry source said. The bomber used a car in the attack, which happened during the morning rush hour on a road in the south-western part of the city.
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/ 24 November 2007
A suicide bomb on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Saturday killed six schoolchildren and wounded three Italians working on an aid project building a bridge, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said. ”It was a suicide bomber … six schoolchildren coming out from school were killed,” said Zemarai Bashary.
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/ 20 November 2007
An internal United Nations report has alleged that bodyguards protecting powerful Afghan politicians opened ”indiscriminate fire” on a crowd in the aftermath of a suicide bombing two weeks ago, killing dozens of people including women and children.
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/ 18 November 2007
Afghan and Nato-led troops, backed by air power, killed at least 12 Taliban fighters and wounded another 15 in an operation in southern Afghanistan, a Defence Ministry spokesperson said on Sunday. Mostly Canadian Nato troops and Taliban insurgents have been engaged in fierce fighting in the Zherai district, west of the biggest southern city of Kandahar.
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/ 7 November 2007
Afghans began three days of national mourning on Wednesday for 41 people, many of them children, killed in the country’s worst suicide attack to date. The attack shakes public confidence in the ability of the Afghan government and the 50 000 foreign troops in the country to provide security.
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/ 6 November 2007
A suicide attack on a parliamentary delegation killed at least 50 people in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a provincial official said, in the worst such blast in the country’s history. Five members of the Afghan Parliament were among the dead and the toll was expected to rise among the delegates and schoolchildren who were among the victims.
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/ 30 October 2007
The United Nations on Monday demanded that the Taliban stop killing aid workers and looting aid convoys so that emergency supplies can reach vulnerable Afghans. Tom Koenigs, head of the UN mission to Afghanistan, said 34 aid workers had been killed by the Taliban and criminal gangs and 76 abducted so far this year.
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/ 28 October 2007
United States-led coalition and Afghan troops killed about 80 Taliban fighters in a six-hour battle following an ambush in southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Sunday. Taliban fighters opened fire on Saturday with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades on the joint coalition and Afghan army patrol from a trench near Musa Qala in Helmand province.
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/ 10 September 2007
At least 26 people, many of them civilians, were killed on Monday in two simultaneous suicide attacks in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, a provincial police official said. About 45 people were also wounded in the twin blasts that targeted a group of police in a shopping area of the Girishk district of the province.
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/ 1 September 2007
South Korea paid Afghanistan’s Taliban more than -million to release 19 missionaries they were holding hostage, a senior insurgent leader said on Saturday, vowing to use the funds to buy arms and mount suicide attacks. The freed hostages flew out of Afghanistan on Friday to Dubai en route for South Korea.
A wanted Taliban insurgent leader in Afghanistan, Mullah Brother, was killed on Thursday in a United States-led raid in the southern province of Helmand, the Afghan Defence Ministry said, citing ground commanders. Brother served as a top military commander for the Taliban government until its removal from power in 2001.
The United Nations reported on Monday that there had been a ”frightening” explosion in opium production in Afghanistan with Helmand province, where Britain has 7 000 troops deployed, leading the way. A record crop means that the country now accounts for 93% of the world’s supply and the situation is getting worse daily despite billions being spent to eradicate the trade since 2001.
More than 100 suspected insurgents were killed in a battle with United States-led troops in southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Wednesday. The battle erupted after a convoy of Afghan and US coalition forces came under attack in the Shah Wali Kot district in Kandahar province, it said in a statement.
Taliban insurgents will release 19 South Korean Christian volunteers they have been holding for more than a month in Afghanistan, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said on Tuesday. The announcement followed the resumption of negotiations that had been on hold for two weeks.