Category Archives: Afghanistan

Taliban prisoners in Pakistan overpower guards and take hostages

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Counter-terrorism officer killed after militants seize compound in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province

Taliban detainees overpowered their guards at a counter-terrorism centre in north-western Pakistan overnight, snatching police weapons, taking hostages and seizing control of the facility.

The incident quickly evolved into a standoff. Pakistani officials later confirmed that one counter-terrorism officer had been killed during the militants’ takeover at the detention centre in Bannu, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and part of a former tribal region.

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Many killed after fuel tanker explodes in tunnel in Afghanistan

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Blast in Salang tunnel, a key route linking north and south of country, killed at least 19 people, says official

At least 19 people were killed and 32 injured when a fuel tanker exploded in a tunnel north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, a local official has said.

The Salang tunnel, about 80 miles (130km) north of Kabul, was originally built in the 1960s. It is a key route linking the country’s north and south.

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Australia urged to offer asylum to Afghan women in ‘grave danger’ from Taliban

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Women facing deportation as Pakistan moves to expel refugees will be targeted by Taliban, crossbencher Rebekha Sharkie says

The Australian government is being urged to offer asylum to Afghan women targeted by the Taliban, as Pakistan moves to expel refugees by the end of the month.

Independent MP Rebekha Sharkie, working with crossbench support from across the parliament, has written to immigration minister Andrew Giles and home affairs minister Clare O’Neil, urging the government to act and bring the women to safety.

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Ministers accused of unlawfully denying Afghan journalists UK visas

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Ben Wallace and Suella Braverman ‘turned their back’ on former BBC journalists who are in danger, high court told

Ministers have unlawfully “turned their back” on former BBC journalists whose lives are at risk from the Taliban by refusing to relocate them from Afghanistan to the UK, the high court has heard.

Eight Afghan journalists, who worked in high-profile roles for the BBC and other media agencies in the country from which British troops withdrew last year, are challenging the decision to deny them UK visas.

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Inquiry launched into claims SAS soldiers killed Afghan civilians

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MoD concedes to longstanding demands for statutory inquiry into allegations dating back to 2010

Ministers have announced a statutory judge-led inquiry into allegations of more than 50 summary killings by SAS soldiers in Afghanistan, a decision made after years of reports that elite British troops killed civilians in cold blood.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Andrew Murrison, the minister for defence people, said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) would concede to longstanding demands for an “independent statutory inquiry” after years of dismissing the idea. The inquiry will cover the period from mid-2010 to mid-2013.

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Taliban carry out first public execution since taking over Afghanistan

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Man accused of fatal stabbing in 2017 executed by victim’s father before senior officials

The Taliban put to death a man accused of murder in western Afghanistan, its spokesperson said on Wednesday, in the first officially confirmed public execution since the group took over the country last year.

The execution in western Farah province was of a man accused of fatally stabbing another man in 2017, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said, and was attended by senior officials of the group.

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Revealed: UK has failed to resettle Afghans facing torture and death despite promise

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Those who risked their lives helping British government face a ‘toxic combination of incompetence and indifference’

Afghan nationals who were promised resettlement to the UK nearly a year ago are facing torture and death while they wait for a response from the British government, the Observer can reveal.

Not one person has been accepted and evacuated from Afghanistan under the Home Office’s Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme (ACRS), launched in January, prompting claims that ministers are showing a “toxic combination of incompetence and indifference”. The scheme was intended to help Afghans who worked for, or were affiliated with, the British government – including its embassy staff and British Council teachers – and all of whom face severe harm at the hands of the Taliban.

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London marchers to call for safe asylum route for Afghan women

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Thousands expected to demonstrate on Sunday to urge UK government to help those fleeing Taliban

Thousands of people are expected to take to London’s streets on Sunday calling on the UK government to create a safe asylum route for Afghan women and girls at risk.

Sunday’s march for freedom for Afghan women and girls in London, organised by the campaign group Action for Afghanistan, comes weeks after MPs appealed to the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, for a renewed focus on women and girls at risk after Britain’s 20-year campaign in the country.

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UK aid to Afghanistan entrenched corruption and injustice, report finds

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Government watchdog says £3.5bn aid in 20 years to 2020 failed to achieve aim of stabilising Afghan government

The UK’s £3.5bn aid to Afghanistan between 2000 and 2020 was implicated in corruption and human rights abuses and failed to achieve its primary objective of stabilising the country’s government, an assessment by the UK government’s aid watchdog has found.

Describing the two-decade aid project as the UK’s single most ambitious programme of state building, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) says decisions to spend aid on counterinsurgency operations were flawed, adding that efforts to reduce gender inequality are likely to be wiped out by the Taliban.

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‘These people had our backs’: US veterans lobby to rescue allies trapped in Afghanistan

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The Afghan Adjustment Act would offer permanent resident status to Afghans who fled the Taliban but Congress has not taken action

​​A group of 12 people sit in camp chairs – chatting, smoking, listening – in the dark. Behind them, the Capitol building in Washington DC is luminescent, bringing into focus the Afghan flag. Well, the version of the flag before the Taliban changed it. It flies above their heads, catching the yellowy light of dusk.

Since Kabul fell to the Taliban in August last year, military veterans and organizations have been lobbying Congress to offer Afghan evacuees long-term visas to stay in the US. Now, with no action taken and thousands coming to the end of their temporary stays, a different route is being taken to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act. This bipartisan bill would grant thousands of Afghans permanent status in the US.

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Afghanistan blast: 19 killed and dozens wounded at Kabul education centre, say police

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No immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in which suicide bomber detonated explosives, say police

A suicide blast at an education institute in the Afghan capital of Kabul has killed 19 people and wounded 27, police said on Friday.

The explosion happened inside the centre in the Dashti Barchi neighborhood of Kabul, said Khalid Zadran, the Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Kabul police chief.

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Taliban release American engineer Mark Frerichs in prisoner swap

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Navy veteran exchanged for Bashir Noorzai, who had been held in US since 2005 on drugs charges

The Taliban have freed an American engineer in exchange for an Afghan tribal leader linked to the group whom the US had held on drugs charges since 2005.

Mark Frerichs was exchanged at Kabul airport for Bashir Noorzai, the acting Taliban foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, told a news conference in the Afghan capital.

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Tajikistan ‘rounding up and deporting Afghan refugees’

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UN refugee agency urges authorities to end forced deportations as families say they are too scared to leave their homes

The Tajikistan authorities are rounding up Afghan refugees and forcing them to cross the border back into Afghanistan, despite some having been granted asylum in other countries.

According to reports from Tajikistan’s 10,000-strong Afghan refugee community, people are being picked up off the street and houses raided in a spate of recent round-ups of Afghan families, who have been sheltering in the country since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

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Hundreds of Hazaras killed by ISKP since Taliban took power, say rights group

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Human Rights Watch says Taliban is failing to protect Shia minority from violent attacks on mosques, schools and workplaces

Hazara communities in Afghanistan are being targeted in violent attacks by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, with more than 700 people killed in 13 attacks in the past year, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

In the report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Taliban of doing little to protect Hazara and other religious minorities from suicide bombings and deadly attacks, and failing to provide adequate medical care and assistance to victims and their families, despite pledging to do so when they took power in August 2021.

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Two Russians among those killed in suicide attack near Kabul embassy

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Moscow says two embassy staff killed and several people injured, as Afghan official says attacker was shot dead

A suicide bomber struck near the Russian embassy in Kabul, killing two staff from the diplomatic mission and wounding several other people, the foreign ministry in Moscow has said.

In the first attack targeting a foreign mission since the Taliban seized power in August last year, the bomber struck on Monday near the entrance of the embassy’s consular section.

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Man pleads guilty to harassing ABC’s Mark Willacy over reporting on alleged Afghanistan war crimes

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Thomas Mark Rickard, who served in ADF, avoids conviction but is ordered to pay $1,000 good behaviour bond for leaving reporter abusive and threatening voicemail

A Victorian man who served with the Australian Defence Force has pleaded guilty to harassing the ABC journalist Mark Willacy after he reported on alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan.

Thomas Mark Rickard, from Lara, near Geelong, was arrested late last year after phoning Willacy and leaving an abusive and threatening voicemail.

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Afghan female judge fleeing Taliban appeals after Home Office refuses UK entry

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Lawyers say the woman, who is in hiding in Pakistan with her son, will be killed if sent back to Afghanistan

A female former senior judge from Afghanistan who is in hiding from the Taliban with her son has filed an appeal to the Home Office after her application to enter the UK was denied.

Lawyers for the woman – who is named as “Y” – said on Saturday they had submitted an appeal on behalf of their client and her son at the Immigration Tribunal, saying she had been left in a “gravely vulnerable position” by the withdrawal of British and other western troops.

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Kabul mosque blast during evening prayers kills 21, say police

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UN expresses concern over rising number of civilian casualties from explosions

A blast that tore through a Kabul mosque during evening prayers on Wednesday killed 21 people, police said, as the United Nations expressed concern over a growing number of civilian casualties from explosions.

The police spokesperson Khalid Zadran said another 33 people had been injured in the blast, which witnesses said shattered the windows of buildings near the mosque in a northern Kabul neighbourhood.

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At least 10 dead after huge bomb rips through Kabul mosque

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Police report multiple casualties after powerful explosion during evening prayers

A huge bomb attack at a mosque in Kabul during evening prayers has killed at least 10 people, including a prominent cleric, and wounded at least 27 others.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on Wednesday, the latest to strike Afghanistan in the year since the Taliban seized power.

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UK treatment of Afghan refugees ‘continues to be source of shame’

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MoD sources accuse other parts of Whitehall of failing to do enough to help Afghans who worked with British forces

Two RAF flights carrying as many as 500 Afghans who worked with British forces and their relatives are landing in the UK each month from Pakistan but there is deep frustration within the Ministry of Defence about how the rest of government is struggling to accommodate arrivals.

It comes as the Taliban and western allies mark the first anniversary of Nato’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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