‘Right thing to do’: Afghan interpreters allowed to resettle in UK over safety fears – video

Moves to relocate hundreds of Afghans who worked for the British military and government will be accelerated owing to fears for their safety as foreign forces prepare to leave the country. More than 3,000 Afghans, including their relatives, are expected to settle in the UK. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said it was ‘the right thing to do’, adding that ‘they sacrificed a lot to look after us and now we’re going to do the same’

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More Afghans who worked for British forces to resettle in UK

Government will step up scheme saving interpreters and others from reprisals as international troops leave

Moves to relocate to the UK hundreds of Afghans who worked for the British military and government will reportedly be accelerated as foreign forces leave the country.

The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy was launched this year, allowing the Afghans, who mostly worked as interpreters, to settle in Britain. More than 1,400 Afghans and their families have already relocated to the UK, and hundreds more received funding for education and training.

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At least three killed as bomb strikes minivan in northern Afghanistan

Officials say vehicle carrying university staff targeted in Kapisa, with bomb set off remotely

A roadside bomb has struck a minivan full of university staff in Afghanistan’s northern Kapisa province, killing three teachers and wounding 15 others, police said on Saturday.

The country’s interior ministry spokesman, Tariq Arian, said on Saturday that the minivan was targeted while travelling from Al-Beroni University. Provincial police spokesman Shayeq Shoresh said the bomb was set off by remote control.

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Taliban threaten Afghan security guards who work for Australian embassy in Kabul

Guards say their work for Australia has made them and their families targets for retribution

The Taliban have publicly threatened Afghan security guards who have worked for the soon-to-be-shut Australian embassy, circulating pictures of them online and warning they would be targeted for cooperating with a foreign government.

The Australian government announced this week that it was shutting its embassy in Kabul, citing “an increasingly uncertain security environment” and saying its diplomats would not be safe “in light of the imminent international military withdrawal from Afghanistan”.

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Afghanistan’s doctors braced for rapid spread of India Covid variant

The country has no testing capacity for the B.1.617.2 strain and medics are concerned about resilience of health system

Doctors in Afghanistan have expressed fears that the Covid-19 variant first discovered in India could now be spreading quickly in the country.

At Kabul’s main Covid hospital, where all 100 beds are occupied, doctors said that many critically ill patients had recently returned from India. Up to 10 people die here every day.

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‘I had to find them’: kidnapped filmmaker Mellissa Fung on her mission to find the Boko Haram girls

After being abducted on assignment in Afghanistan, journalist Mellissa Fung shares an intense bond with the teenage girls who were held captive by Boko Haram

The journalist and filmmaker Mellissa Fung is showing me her wound – or to be precise, the scar where her wound once was. It’s from the struggle with one of the Afghan rebels who, 12 years ago, kidnapped Fung near Kabul and held her in a pit in the ground for a month, a place she refers to simply, and rather chillingly as, “the hole”.

“In combat training they teach you not to fight back, but I played ice hockey as a kid so I couldn’t help it,” Fung says. “The guy had a knife so I learned my lesson.”

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Gaza damage and Glasgow raids: human rights this fortnight in pictures

A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru

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Climate disasters ‘caused more internal displacement than war’ in 2020

Refugee organisation says 30m new displacements last year were due to floods, storms or wildfires

Intense storms and flooding triggered three times more displacements than violent conflicts did last year, as the number of people internally displaced worldwide hit the highest level on record.

There were at least 55 million internally displaced people (IDPs) by the end of last year, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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Afghanistan: fighting resumes in south after three-day ceasefire for Eid

Taliban and government forces clash in Helmand, the scene of intense battles following US troop withdrawal

Fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government forces has resumed in the southern province of Helmand, officials said, ending a three-day ceasefire agreed by the warring sides to mark the Eid al-Fitr holiday.

There were clashes on Sunday on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, which has seen intense fighting since the United States began its final troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on 1 May, an Afghan military spokesperson and a local official said.

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‘Hosnia had dreams’: grief in Kabul as girls’ school targeted

Hazara community in mourning but defiant after more than 60 people killed in school bomb blasts


Latifa and Hosnia had been sharing a wooden bench in their classroom at Kabul’s Sayed Al-Shuhada school for the past three years.

When Latifa transferred to Sayed Al-Shuhada, the two girls were immediately drawn to each other and became best friends, always together in their free time, studying side by side, walking home together after school. They found comfort in each other’s presence; support in a place that has never been easy for girls and women.

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Taliban declares three-day Eid ceasefire as 11 killed in new bombing

Bus attack comes after jihadist group denies atrocity at secondary school that killed at least 50 people

At least 11 people have been killed and dozens injured in the bombing of a bus in Afghanistan’s southern Zabul province.

The blast took place late on Sunday night, said Zabul’s provincial governor’s spokesman Gul Islam Sial, adding that 25 people were injured including women and children who were in critical condition.

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Afghans bury their dead after dozens of girls killed in school blasts

Taliban deny responsibility after secondary school targeted in bloody attack in Kabul

Dozens of girls were buried on Sunday at a desolate hilltop cemetery in Kabul, a day after a secondary school was targeted in the bloodiest attack in Afghanistan in over a year.

A series of blasts outside the school during a peak holiday shopping period killed more than 50 people, mostly female students, and wounded more than 100 in Dasht-e-Barchi, a suburb of west Kabul populated mostly by Hazara Shias.

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Afghan families bury schoolgirls killed in Kabul blasts – video

Grieving families gathered on Sunday after an attack on a girls’ school in the Afghan capital of Kabul in which about 50 people were killed and at least twice as many injured, mainly female pupils aged between 11 and 15. The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, blamed the Taliban, saying the group was 'escalating its illegitimate war and violence'. 

The Taliban denied responsibility and blamed Islamic State

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Blasts target school in west Kabul killing at least 40 people

Attack in Afghan capital injures mainly female students coming out of school in Shia Muslim area

At least 40 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a bomb attack on girls leaving their school in a largely Shia Muslim neighbourhood in Kabul.

Residents said they heard multiple blasts just as girls were leaving classes at the Sayed ul Shuhada school in the Afghan capital to return home and break their Ramadan fast. Most of the victims appear to have been students.

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Thousands of Afghans flee as fighting erupts after US troop withdrawal begins

Fighting between government forces and the Taliban has broken out in Helmand province

Thousands of Afghans have fled their homes in Helmand province as fierce fighting between government forces and the Taliban erupted after the US military began withdrawing its remaining troops.

Afghan forces pushed back a string of insurgent attacks on checkpoints across the southern province, where the US military on Sunday handed over a base to government forces as part of its formal pullout that began on 1 May.

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Threats to safety force dozens of Afghan journalists to go into hiding

Network of safe houses set up amid fears of rising violence as Nato forces prepare to pull out in September

Dozens of journalists have moved to safe houses across Afghanistan, and others have been sent abroad, as threats against media workers continue to rise.

New safe houses have been set up in several Afghan cities as evacuations increase, offering some security for targeted journalists.

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Afghanistan: At least 21 killed in blast as US prepares to withdraw troops

Scores also injured in the blast in southern city of Pul-e-Alam the day before Pentagon begins to pull out its remaining forces

At least 21 people have been killed and nearly 100 wounded after a car bomb exploded in an Afghan city south of the capital that president Ashraf Ghani has blamed on the Taliban.

Friday’s blast occurred in a residential area of Pul-e-Alam, capital of Logar province, as people were breaking their Ramadan fast, and came on the eve of the formal start of the US military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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UK accused of stranding vulnerable refugees after Brexit

Exclusive: Torture survivors and lone children stuck in Greece and Italy after Home Office ‘deliberately’ ends cooperation on family reunions

The Home Office has been accused of failing to reunite vulnerable refugees who have the right to join family in the UK under EU law, leaving lone children and torture survivors stranded.

The government faced widespread criticism when it announced that family reunion law would no longer apply after the UK left the EU, and it promised that cases under way on that date would be allowed to proceed.

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Normalising special needs: the Kabul school offering hope

Fatima Khalil school has given some children the first taste of education – and love – in their lives

Laughter and excited chatter burst out of the colourfully painted classrooms. In a quiet garden schoolhouse amid the jam-packed Afghan capital, Kabul, pupils run around, study and play in the country’s first official school for children with disabilities.

It’s a far cry from what most of these children have previously experienced. For many, it’s the first time in their lives they feel loved and accepted.

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Killing of female polio vaccinators puts Afghan eradication campaign at risk

Rise in cases feared as murders halt campaigns and leave many women too afraid to work

Gul Meena Hotak was on her regular rounds, going door-to-door giving polio vaccinations in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, when she heard gunshots.

The 22-year-old’s immediate concern was for the safety of her friend Negina and other colleagues nearby. “Negina and my supervisor were in a neighbourhood close by when a gunman approached and shot at them. My supervisor escaped with gunshot injuries, but Negina was killed on the spot,” Hotak said.

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