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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
41 KILLED IN AFGHAN FIVE-VEHICLE BLAST KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A cluster of vehicle bombs detonated simultaneously Tuesday near a foreign-owned company that plans to build a road through an insurgentheld area. At least 41 people were killed, all civilians, officials said. The thundering explosion in the Taliban’s spiritual homeland occurred just after nightfall in a district that includes U.N. facilities and an Afghan intelligence office. The force of the blast shattered windows around the city and sent flames shooting into the sky. So many houses and nearby buildings had collapsed that officials feared the death toll could rise further. At least 66 people were wounded, said Gen. Ghulam Ali Wahabat, a police commander in charge of southern Afghanistan. “There was big smoke in the sky, and there were many dead bodies,” said Mohammad Ismail, a vegetable seller being treated at the hospital for leg and hand injuries from the blast. “Some of the wounded were crying out.” It appeared the main target was the Japanese company that is involved in reconstruction efforts in the southern Afghan city. The company recently took over a contract to build a road that insurgents had stalled for several months.
AP PHOTO/ALLAUDDIN KHILJI
An unidentified wounded man is treated at a hospital after five car bombs detonated simultaneously Tuesday in Afghanistan’s largest southern city of Kandahar. The explosion killed tens of people destroying a construction company office and damaging dozens of nearby buildings. An intelligence office is about a quarter mile (400 meters) from the attack site and a U.N. office is located about a half mile (800 meters)
away. “The staff is good, everybody is safe,” said Samad Khaydarov, head of the U.N. Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan. “Our office, our guesthouses, are safe. ... Unfortunately, security is not so good in Kandahar.”
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The blast in the center of the city was one of the largest since the Taliban were expelled from the country in 2001. It destroyed about 40 shops, including restaurants and bakeries. “Once again they’ve killed children, women, innocent Afghans. They are not human. They are animals. You can see for yourself the destruction of this enemy,” said deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Sher Shah. The exact mechanism of the bombing was still being determined. Provincial council member Haji Agha Lalai said five vehicles filled with explosives detonated together, causing the massive blast. But Shah said the vehicles used were an oil tanker filled with explosives and two car bombs. Kandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban, and the militants have carried out several complex attacks here in the last several years. A large NATO base sits on Kandahar’s outskirts, but militants control districts immediately to the city’s west. — AP
Top Iranian reformist confesses in political trial TEHRAN, Iran — Saeed Hajjarian was a diehard hero of Iran’s reform movement, campaigning to reduce the power of the Islamic clerics even after being shot in the head in an assassination attempt that left him partially paralyzed. On Tuesday, he was brought into a courtroom propped up by men who put him in the front row of defendants in Iran’s biggest political trial in decades, where he proceeded to renounce his entire career as a reformist. His speech slurred and nearly unintelligible from the 2000 attack, Hajjarian had a statement read proclaiming that Iran’s supreme leader represents the rule of God on Earth and asking for forgiveness for his “incorrect” ideas. The stunning confession was among the most dramatic in the trial of more than 100 reform leaders and protesters arrested in Iran’s post-election crackdown — testimony the opposition says was coerced by threats and mistreatment during weeks of solitary confinement. A procession of the biggest names in the reform movement has taken the stand during the past month, some looking thin and tired, all dressed in blue pajama-like prison uniforms and slippers. They have confessed to taking part in what the government says was a plot backed by foreign enemies to
overthrow Iran’s clerical leadership in a “velvet revolution.” The opposition has compared the proceedings to Josef Stalin’s “show trials” against his opponents in the Soviet Union, saying the government is trying to wipe out the reform movement. Hajjarian’s turn in court perhaps more resembled a scene from China’s Cultural Revolution, as he repented of the pro-reform ideology he has espoused for years. In a statement read by a fellow defendant, he confessed to trying to spread “Marxist thought” that “has no relation to Iran.” He said he had led astray his political party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, with his ideas and announced his resignation from the party. He threw his support behind Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose rule “springs from the rule of the Prophet Muhammad.” “I’ve committed grave mistakes by offering incorrect analysis during the election,” Hajjarian said. “I apologize to the dear Iranian nation because of my incorrect analyses that was the basis for many wrong actions.” The Islamic Iran Participation Front dismissed the confessions by Hajjarian and other party leaders as forced, saying: “What
AP PHOTO/ILNA, HOUSHANG HADI)
In this photo released by the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA), the leader of the biggest Iranian reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Mohsen Mirdamadi, center, sits in prison uniform between two police officers during the trial of dozens of opposition activists and protesters Tuesday in a Tehran Revolutionary Court. Activists and protesters are charged with rioting and plotting to topple the ruling Islamic system through a “velvet revolution” in June. is uttered from their tongue today is not by their will.” The 55-year-old Hajjarian was arrested soon after mass protests erupted over the disputed June 12 presidential election, when hundreds of thousands took to the streets claiming that President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s victory was fraudulent. Held for weeks in a secret location with no contact with lawyers or family, the opposition repeatedly expressed concern over his health in custody. —AP
Israel PM seeks compromise with US on settlements LONDON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to defuse an unusually public spat with the United States over West Bank settlements when he meets with a top U.S. envoy Wednesday morning. Netanyahu said Tuesday before his meeting with George Mitchell in London that he wants an agreement that allows Israel to proceed with some settlement construction while at the same time restarting peace talks with the Palestinians. But he also made clear he sees the
spotlight on settlements as unfair and insisted the Mideast conflict is rooted in a deep Arab enmity to Israel that predates them. Netanyahu’s remarks came in a briefing to reporters after a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during his four-day trip through Europe. The subject of settlements is also sure to be raised at his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday. The steadily growing settlements in the West Bank, which the Palestinians
want for a future state, are home to 300,000 Israelis, making an Israeli withdrawal more difficult. The territory is home to some 2.5 million Palestinians. The issue has come to overshadow Israel’s ties with the U.S and much of the international community since March, when Netanyahu took power with a hardline government and President AP PHOTO/SEBASTIAN SCHEINER Barack Obama indicated that years of Former U.S. President and member of The Elders Jimmy Carter, reluctant U.S. tolerance for settlement is seen following a ceremony Tuesday in Jerusalem. The Elders, construction had ended. a group of eminent global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, —AP
are visiting the Middle East region amid efforts to restart peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
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