International

An explosion hit a minivan in a Shia neighbourhood of western Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least one person and wounding three others, a Taliban official said. Zabihullah Mujahid, deputy minister for culture and information in the Taliban-led government, told The Associated Press that an investigation is continuing. He did not elaborate. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion. The militant …

KHARTOUM: Sudanese security forces shot dead at least 10 anti-coup protesters and wounded dozens more on Wednesday, medics said, in the bloodiest day since the military’s October 25 takeover. The fatalities — all in Khartoum, especially its northern districts — raised to 34 the death toll from unrest since the military seized power, a pro-democracy doctors’ union said. Hundreds more have …

Afghanistan is “on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe” and its collapsing economy is heightening the risk of extremism, the UN’s special representative for the country warned on Wednesday. Deborah Lyons said the United Nations predicts that 60 per cent of Afghanistan’s 38 million people face crisis levels of hunger in a food emergency that will likely worsen over the …

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Tuesday the Afghan Taliban would be invited to the third ministerial meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbours. Mr Qureshi, at a meeting of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “Afghanistan’s interim government will also be invited to the next meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbours.” Pakistan had worked out a new mechanism for consultations among Afghanistan’s …

SOKOLKA: Polish forces fired tear gas and deployed water cannons against stone-throwing migrants trying to cross the Belarusian border on Tuesday, sparking accusations from Belarus that Poland was trying to escalate the crisis. Polish border guards estimate up to 4,000 migrants are currently camped out along the border between Poland and Belarus in increasingly dire conditions and freezing temperatures. Western …

PARIS: Technology sold by Israeli spyware company Candiru appears to have been used for a campaign of cyberattacks targeting high-profile Middle Eastern websites, an analysis by cyber-security firm Eset said on Tuesday. “We think it was a client of Candiru that carried out these attacks,” Eset investigator Matthieu Faou said. Eset did not name the client, but pointed to an …

YANGON: Myanmar’s junta has charged Aung San Suu Kyi with committing electoral fraud during the 2020 polls, state media reported on Tuesday, the latest in a barrage of allegations against her since her party won in a landslide. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military coup in February sparked nationwide protests and a deadly crackdown on dissent. Detained since …

Thailand’s legislature shot down on Wednesday a draft bill aimed at strengthening democracy, in which its backers sought to scrap or overhaul of key institutions they said had been hijacked by the military elite. A joint session of the lower house of parliament and the Senate voted 473-206 to reject the bill, with six abstentions, which called for a constitution …

LIVERPOOL: British police are investigating the background of a mentally troubled Iraqi-Syrian convert to Christianity who died in a botched bomb attack in Liverpool, according to multiple reports on Tuesday. Counter-terrorism police in northwest England released four men late on Monday after questioning them over the incident, which came seconds before Britain marked Remembrance Sunday. “Police have been satisfied with …

KAMPALA: Three people died and several dozen were injured in twin suicide bombings targeting Uganda’s capital Kampala on Tuesday, police said, blaming a “domestic terror group” linked to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) for the attacks. An armed group active in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the ADF has been linked to the militant Islamic State group by Washington …