23-10-2025

Month: September 2024

Six killed, 13 wounded in Kabul suicide bombing: police

Violence has waned in Afghanistan since the 2021 Taliban takeover, however, several militant groups remain active, including the regional chapter of Islamic State.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday afternoon’s attack, which took place in the Qala-e-Bakhtiar area of Kabul’s southern outskirts.

Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said “a person wearing explosives on his body detonated”, and one woman was among the fatalities.

“The injured were transferred to hospitals on time and investigations are ongoing,” he posted on social media platform X.

Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have declared security their highest priority since surging back to power following the chaotic withdrawal of foreign forces three years ago.

While their sweeping security operations have led to a decline in militants challenging their rule, according to analysts, they also downplay or delay confirmation of attacks.

The last suicide attack in Afghanistan claimed by the regional chapter of Islamic State was in the southern city of Kandahar — the Taliban’s historic stronghold — in March.

Taliban authorities said only three people were killed while a hospital source put the toll far higher at 20.

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP last month that Islamic State “existed here before but we suppressed them very hard”.

“No such groups exist here that can pose a threat to anyone,” he said.

UN expert warns Israel’s ‘genocidal violence’ may spread beyond Gaza

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, warned in a statement that Israel’s recent intensification of its operations in the occupied West Bank, which is separated from Gaza by Israeli territory, marked “a dangerous escalation”.

“Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole,” she said.

 

 

“The writing is on the wall, and we cannot continue to ignore it. There is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control.” Albanese, who is an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations, has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide in its conflict in Gaza.

Special rapporteur Francesca Albanese says no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control

Violence has surged in the West Bank after the Hamas October 7 raid in Israel. Monday’s statement came after days of surging violence, with the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry saying that at least 26 Palestinians had been killed since Wednesday when Israel launched simultaneous raids across the northern West Bank.

Middle Eastern and Western governments, as well as UN officials, have called on Israel to end the large-scale operations in the Palestinian territory, which it has occupied since 1967.

“Apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement and territorial expansion,” Albanese said.

“The long-standing impunity granted to Israel is enabling the de-Palestinisation of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of the forces pursuing their elimination as a national group,” she added.

She called on the international community to “do everything it can to immediately end the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people under Israel’s occupation, ensure accountability and ultimately end Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian territory”.

Truck slams into bar leaving 9 dead in Dominican Republic

At least nine people were killed Sunday in the Dominican Republic after a cargo truck crashed into a bar on the Caribbean island nation’s south coast, a police source said.

The accident occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning, in the small city of Azua, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of the capital Santo Domingo.

“The number of injured and dead is still being determined. A count is being carried out in the different hospitals,” a police source told AFP, asking not to identified because he was not an official spokesman.

He gave a preliminary death toll of nine people.

Local media reported that 30 others were injured and that authorities were probing what caused the accident.

Final probe reveals ‘bad weather’ as reason of Raisi copter crash

A final investigation into the May helicopter crash that killed former  Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has found that the accident was caused by bad weather, the body probing the case said Sunday.

The helicopter carrying 63-year-old Raisi and his entourage came down on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran, killing the president and seven others, and triggering snap elections.

The main cause of the helicopter crash was the “complex climatic and atmospheric conditions of the region in the spring”, the special board investigating the dimensions and causes of the helicopter accident said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.

The report added that “the sudden emergence of a thick mass of dense and rising fog” caused the helicopter’s collision into the mountain.

Iran’s army in May similarly said it had found no evidence of criminal activity in the crash that also killed Raisi’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

In August, Fars News Agency cited the main causes of the May 19 crash as bad weather conditions and the helicopter’s inability to ascend with two extra passengers against security protocols.

But the Iranian armed forces were quick to reject the finding saying, “what is mentioned on Fars news about the presence of two people in the helicopter against the security protocols […] is completely false”.

PM Shehbaz ‘satisfied’ with drop in inflation, economic stability

ISLAMABAD: Expressing satisfaction over the “nosediving of inflation rate” in the country, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said that the economy is moving towards stability owing to the hard work of the government’s financial team.

Citing the details shared by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the prime minister said on Sunday that the ‘Consumer Price Index’ fell to record low in July 2024, bringing inflation to 11% and welcomed the forecast of further decline in the inflation rate in the current month of September.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance — in its monthly outlook report — stated that on account of stability in economic indicators, inflation is expected to remain within the range of 9.5-10.5% in August and further decline to 9-10% in September.

“After Fitch, the global rating agency, Moody’s recently upgraded Pakistan’s credit rating, which is an acknowledgement of the country’s positive economic indicators by the international financial institutions,” the PM Office Media Wing, in an official statement, quoted the premier as saying.

The government is pursuing a policy of economic reforms and the implementation work is rapidly in progress over the rightsizing policy of the government which the premier himself is monitoring, according to the communique.

PM Shehbaz also expressed the confidence that its positive impact on the economy would be visible soon.

At the same time he also acknowledged that the federal and Punjab governments had provided a big relief to the electricity consumers in respect of monthly bills, adding the prices of petroleum products were further reduced from today.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led government announced a reduction of Rs14 per unit in the electricity tariff for August and September under a power subsidy plan for consumers using 201 to 500 units.

The premier said that the government believed in passing on all the benefits of such policies to the common man. “The government is cognizant of the issues of the people and was striving day and night to resolve them,” he added.

Earlier in August, Moody’s Ratings upgraded Pakistan’s local and foreign currency issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings to Caa2 from Caa3 owing to improvement in macroeconomic conditions.

“We have also upgraded the rating for the senior unsecured MTN programme to (P)Caa2 from (P)Caa3. Concurrently, the outlook for the Government of Pakistan has changed to positive from stable,” the rating agency said in a statement.

Accordingly, Pakistan’s default risk has reduced to a level consistent with a Caa2 rating, as per Moody’s. “There is now greater certainty on Pakistan’s sources of external financing, following the sovereign’s staff-level agreement with the IMF on 12 July 2024 for a 37-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of $7 billion.”

The release of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) latest schedule is a significant development, but the absence of Pakistan’s loan approval on the agenda is a cause of concern as it is critical for the country to secure the loan to shore up its sinking economy.

On the other hand, the government remained optimistic that the country will secure approval for a $7 billion bailout package from the IMF next month, sources privy to the matters told Geo News earlier this week.

Finance Minister Aurangzeb last week also dismissed concerns about the IMF declining the staff-level agreement, exuding confidence that “the lender will approve it next month”.

Pakistan and the global lender had reached an agreement on the 37-month loan programme in July.

The IMF said the programme was subject to approval from its Executive Board and obtaining “timely confirmation of necessary financing assurances from Pakistan’s development and bilateral partners”.

Pakistan rejects Indian FM’s ‘misleading’ remarks on Kashmir dispute

In response to Indian Minister for External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s remarks on the disputed region of Kashmir, the Foreign Office (FO) on Sunday unequivocally rejected “any narrative that suggests that the dispute has been or can be settled unilaterally”.

“The Jammu and Kashmir dispute is internationally recognised and must be resolved in accordance with the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people. Resolution of this unresolved conflict is pivotal to peace and stability in South Asia,” FO Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a statement.

On Friday, Jaishankar said that the era of “uninterrupted dialogue” with Pakistan is over while saying that New Delhi will respond to developments “whether positive or negative”.

“So far as Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, Article 370 is done. The issue [now] is what kind of relationship we can contemplate with Pakistan,” the Indian media quoted him as saying at a private event.

Responding to the remarks, Baloch said that such claims were not only “misleading but dangerously delusional, as they blatantly disregard the on-ground realities”.

“India’s unilateral actions in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) cannot and will not change this reality,” she added.

The spokesperson reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to diplomacy and dialogue but warned that any hostile actions would be met with “unyielding resolve”.

She urged India to abandon its “provocative rhetoric” about the Indian occupied territory, and to instead engage in a meaningful dialogue for a just and lasting resolution to the dispute.

The statement stressed that true peace and stability in South Asia can only be achieved through a settlement in accordance with UNSC resolutions and the inalienable rights of the Kashmiri people.

Pakistan downgraded its ties with India after the Modi-led government unilaterally changed the special status of the IIOJK in August 2019 — the decision that Islamabad believed undermined the environment for holding talks between the neighbours.

Islamabad has linked its decision to normalising ties with New Delhi with the restoration of the special status of the IIOJK.

Despite the frosty ties, the two countries agreed to renew the 2003 ceasefire agreement along the Line of Control (LoC) in February 2021.

SNP will focus on ‘people’s priorities’ – Swinney

The SNP leader John Swinney has pledged to put the “people’s priorities” at the heart of the Scottish government .

In his keynote address to the SNP conference in Edinburgh, he insisted he would still focus on convincing voters that independence was the “route” to delivering a fairer and stronger country.

But he warned that the Scottish government would need to work “harder and smarter” to deliver in the face of Westminster “cuts”.

On Wednesday, the first minister will formally set out his legislative plans for the coming year in the programme for government after MSPs return to Holyrood.

John Swinney closed the SNP conference with a speech laying out his government’s priorities

Mr Swinney was making his first conference speech as first minister since becoming SNP leader in May following the resignation of Humza Yousaf.

Within weeks he found himself leading the party into a general election which saw the SNP’s tally of MPs fall from 48 to just nine.

In his speech he acknowledged it had been “an incredibly tough night”.

“We’ve reflected as a party and we are learning the lessons of that election,” he told delegates.

He promised to turn the SNP into an “election winning organisation again” and lead his party to victory at the next Holyrood vote in 2026.

In a closed session of the conference on Friday Mr Swinney he was recorded telling delegates the party had spent too much time focusing on the “process of independence”.

His closing speech to the conference did not spell out a strategy for achieving another referendum but he won prolonged applause when he insisted independence remained central to his message.

Mr Swinney said: “My promise to you is that I will make sure independence is understood as the route to a stronger and fairer country.

“Understood not as nice to have – but as urgent and essential here and now. That is how we will make independence happen.”

First Minister John Swinney met delegates during the SNP conference at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre

Mr Swinney said he wanted the party to look outwards rather than inwards and to speak to the people of Scotland.

He said they only earned the right to be heard when they were focused on making life better for them.

He said the government would “tailor support better to families” so they can “get the help they need” in what he described as sustainable and smarter policy-making.

He conceded that this would not have the same “immediate impact” as ending the two-child cap on some benefits – something the Labour government at Westminster has said it does not have the money to do.

The SNP leader added: “We will also prioritise our public services – including our cherished NHS.

“We will bring forward reforms to shift the balance of care to preventive and community-based support.”

He said Labour was guilty of a “breach of trust” by announcing £22bn of spending cuts within weeks of its election victory.

He said it amounted to austerity with a “capital A” and predicted it would go down as an “era-defining moment”.

“So it falls on us, the national party of Scotland, to awaken that sense of optimism and hope among our fellow Scots,” he said.

“To rekindle the imagination of our nation, to show them that a better future is possible, to unite our country to win our independence – that is what we have to do.”

He spoke of seeing children who went to school with his son experience the same poverty he saw others endure when he himself was younger.

“Even in the toughest of financial circumstances, the SNP will do everything we can to give every single child the best possible start in life,” he said.

Lynsey Bews

BBC Scotland chief political correspondent

John Swinney’s conference speech did three things – it acknowledged the party’s painful general election result, set out his priorities for governing and attempted to refocus the arguments around the constitution onto the whys of independence, instead of the hows.

He was clear lessons would be learned from the election – but stressed it was now time to “move on together”. It was a call – or rather an instruction – to members to finally put internal divisions behind them.

Mr Swinney’s speech included a reference to the public’s priorities. The SNP has been accused of spending too much political capital on socially progressive issues – at the expense of bread and butter ones like health and education.

There was a notable gear change when it comes to the economy. A focus on growth that some feel was missing during Nicola Sturgeon’s premiership.

And then there’s independence. The first minister said after the election the party had failed to convince the public of the urgency of it.

Today, there was no mention of a second referendum. Instead Mr Swinney’s strategy is to concentrate on substance rather than process, by linking the constitution to those everyday issues.

Ruling PML-N opposes talks with PTI amid reports of ‘indirect dialogue’

ISLAMABAD: Amid reports of an “indirect dialogue” with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz-led (PML-N) leaders strongly opposed talks with their political nemesis.

Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal linked the holding of any dialogue with the PTI apologising for allegedly staging last year’s May 9 violent protests that saw attacks on public properties including military installations following party founder Imran Khan’s arrest in a corruption case.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif also opposed the talks with the former ruling party, saying he is not favour of any such dialogue.

Previously, the ruling parties extended an olive branch to Imran Khan-founded party several times but to no avail, as latter stating he will hold talks with those who wield real power in the country.

The ruling party leaders’ statements came amid reports that the PML-N had purportedly approached Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) Chairman Mehmood Khan Achakzai for holding talks with the PTI.

Achakzai, who also heads the opposition alliance Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Ain-e-Pakistan,  was nominated by jailed Khan to hold talks with the ruling parties.

Responding to the report, Asif – while speaking to journalists – said that he wasn’t part of “team assigned to talk to PkMAP chairman”.

When asked whether talks should be held with the former ruling party, the PML-N stalwart said: “I’m not in favour of negotiations.”

Meanwhile, Iqbal also opposed dialogue with PTI until Imran Khan “apologises for the violence carried out on May 9”.

Speaking to journalists after a consultative meeting of PML-N leadership, the planning minister claimed that PTI, in collaboration with India, had the “anti-Pakistan” resolution passed in the US House of Representatives that sought probe into the alleged irregularities in the February 8 general elections.

Criticising the PTI, the minister accused the party of causing more damage than terrorists and questioned the possibility of dialogue with such individuals.

Iqbal further said that the deposed premier was “enjoying five-star facilities in the jail”, adding that they also faced imprisonment but never complained.

“He [Imran] wants NRO [National Reconciliation Ordinance] which he will not get,” he said while referring to the deal granted by former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf to close down corruption cases against his political rivals.

‘Talks within constitutional limits’

Earlier on Aug 3, Imran said that he was open to talks but only within the “ambit provisioned by the Constitution”.

Khan had clarified that he has, in fact, asked Achakzai to negotiate with political parties.

“Achakzai will only [hold] talk with political parties,” he said.

The incarcerated politico had in July also put forward three conditions to hold talks with the government in a bid to bring political stability in the country.

“The first condition is that my cases should be dismissed, the second is to release our party members and third is to return our mandate,” Khan said while having an informal talk with the journalists in Adiala Jail where has been incarcerated since August 5 last year in multiple cases ranging from corruption to terrorism.

President, PM reaffirm Pakistan’s commitment to Kashmiris’ right to self-determination

Zardari pays tribute to Syed Ali Gilani’s legacy on Kashmir martyrdom anniversary: Shehbaz Sharif vows continued support for Kashmiri people’s struggle

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif have paid homage to the iconic Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Gilani for his unwavering struggle for the rights of the oppressed people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

President Zardari described, in his message, Gilani as a beacon of hope and resistance who inspired countless Kashmiris to steadfastly pursue their right to self-determination.

The President reaffirmed that Pakistan will persist in advocating for the realization of the people of IIOJK’s right to self-determination, as outlined in the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also echoed this commitment, stating that the struggle for the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination will continue until the goal is achieved.

In a message marking the third martyrdom anniversary of veteran Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Gilani, the Prime Minister underscored Pakistan’s ongoing moral, diplomatic, and political support for the Kashmiri cause.

PM Sharif lauded Syed Ali Gilani as a revered figure in the Kashmir independence movement, noting that Gilani was a great leader with an unwavering belief in the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination, to which he dedicated his entire life.

He emphasized that the sacrifices of Gilani, who endured the hardships of captivity without wavering in his resolve, will not be in vain.

The Prime Minister concluded by expressing confidence that Syed Ali Gilani’s contributions to the struggle for the independence of the Kashmiri people will always be remembered and honored.

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