The governor of Utah has been criticised after he said he prayed that the man suspected of shooting Charlie Kirk “wouldn’t be one of us.” In Friday’s briefing, US officials revealed that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson had been arrested and that he had engraved messages on bullets.
The sound of an Israeli bomb interrupted Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud during a live broadcast as he explained that fighter jets have been striking buildings in Gaza City every 10–15 minutes since this morning. Israel says its forces are “increasing the pace of attacks” on the city.
Israeli forces bombed a residential building causing fires to spread in an intense night of Israeli strikes on Gaza City. The army says its forces are “increasing the pace of attacks” and told hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move south.
Pakistani security forces have raided two hideouts of the Pakistan Taliban armed group near the Afghan border this week, triggering fierce clashes that killed 12 soldiers and 35 fighters, says the military.
The military on Saturday said 22 fighters were killed in the first raid in Bajaur, a district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Thirteen more were killed in a separate operation in South Waziristan district, it added.
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The statement said the 12 soldiers, “having fought gallantly, paid the ultimate sacrifice and embraced martyrdom” in South Waziristan, their deaths underscoring the struggles Pakistan faces as it tries to rein in resurging armed groups.
The Pakistan Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message on social media. The group, which Islamabad says is based in Afghanistan, is separate to but closely linked with the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Pakistan Taliban uses Afghan soil to stage attacks in Pakistan, the military said, urging the Taliban government in Kabul “to uphold its responsibilities and deny use of its soil for terrorist activities against Pakistan”.
The military described the killed fighters as “Khwarij”, a term the government uses for the Pakistan Taliban, and alleged they were backed by India, though it offered no evidence for the allegation.
Pakistan has long accused India of supporting the Pakistan Taliban and separatists in Balochistan, charges that New Delhi denies. There was no immediate comment from the Taliban in Kabul or from New Delhi.
From 10-13 September, thirty five Khwarij belonging to Indian Proxy, Fitna al Khwarij were sent to hell in two separate engagements in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
On reported presence of Khwarij, an intelligence based operation was conducted by the Security Forces in Bajaur…
Pakistan has faced a surge in armed attacks in recent years, most claimed by the Pakistan Taliban, which has become emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Kabul in 2021, with many Pakistan Taliban leaders and fighters finding sanctuary across the border.
Saturday’s attack was one of the deadliest in months in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the Pakistan Taliban once controlled swaths of territory until they were pushed back by a military operation that began in 2014.
For several weeks, residents of various districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have reported that graffiti bearing the Pakistan Taliban’s name has appeared on buildings. They say they fear a return to the group’s reign over the region during the peak of the so-called war on terror, led by the United States, which spilled across from Afghanistan.
A local government official recently told the AFP news agency that the number of Pakistan Taliban fighters and attacks had increased.
Nearly 460 people, mostly members of the security forces, have been killed since January 1 in attacks carried out by armed groups fighting the state, both in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southern province of Balochistan, according to an AFP tally.
Israel’s rampage through the Middle East continues, with an attack on United States ally, Qatar. As Arab nations evaluate the value of a US security guarantee, we examine the fallout in the region and beyond.
Contributors:
Elham Fakhro – Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
Laleh Khalili – Professor of Gulf Studies, University of Exeter
Yossi Mekelberg – Senior Fellow, Chatham House
Yousef Munayyer – Senior Fellow, Arab Center Washington DC
A youth-led social media movement over the luxurious lifestyles of Nepal’s “nepo kids” culminated this week in the ouster of the country’s prime minister and days of violent unrest. Meenakshi Ravi examines the government’s unsuccessful effort to control the narrative.
Thirty years after the end of apartheid in South Africa, the African National Congress’s rampant corruption has widened inequality. Those trying to expose that corruption – whistleblowers – are paying the ultimate price – with their lives.
Featuring:
Khas Kunar, Afghanistan – Stoori was pulled out from under the rubble of his house in Kunar province after it was destroyed by the magnitude 6 earthquake which struck on the night of August 31. But the guilt of not being able to save his wife haunts him.
“I barely had enough time to pull out the body of my dead wife and place her on the rubble of our collapsed home before my children and I were evacuated,” the grief-stricken 40-year-old farmer says.
Authorities say about 2,200 people have been killed and more than 5,000 homes destroyed in eastern Afghanistan, most of them in Kunar province, where houses mostly built from wood and mud bricks crumbled in the shocks of the quake.
Stoori, who only gave one name, is now staying with his children in a sprawling evacuation camp 60km (37 miles) from his village – in Khas Kunar.
“My village has become a graveyard. All 40 families lost their homes. The earthquake killed 12 people in my community and left 22 others badly injured,” he says.
In all, the UN says half a million people have been affected by the quake.
In this camp, which is lined with tents provided by international NGOs, nearly 5,000 people are sheltering, each with stories of loss and pain.
Thankfully, the camp has access to water and sanitation, and there are two small clinics ready to receive injured newcomers, as well as an ambulance which can be dispatched to collect people.
Right now, workers are digging a trench to install another water pipe, which will divert water to areas in need around the camp.
Just a few hundred metres away, what were once United States military warehouses have been transformed into government offices coordinating the emergency response.
The Taliban, which returned to power after US-led forces withdrew in 2021 after 20 years of occupation, has been overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.
Tens of thousands of people are without any shelter at all just weeks before the onset of winter, and the mountainous terrain makes relief and rescue efforts difficult.
Najibullah Haqqani, Kunar’s provincial director for the Ministry of Information and Culture, says the authorities are working through a three-step emergency plan: Evacuate those at risk, provide shelter, food, and medical care in camps, and, eventually, rebuild homes or find permanent housing.
But the situation is becoming more challenging by the day. “Fortunately, we have received support from the government, local businesses, volunteers and international NGOs. They all came and helped with food and money for the displaced people,” he tells Al Jazeera.
More than 10 days after the tremor, new arrivals join the camp daily, inside the fortified walls of the former US base on the banks of the Kabul River.
Among them is Nurghal, a 52-year-old farmer from Shalatak village who was able to reunite with the surviving members of his family only on Wednesday morning. “From my large extended family, 52 people were killed and almost 70 were left badly injured,” he says. The devastation is “unimaginable”, he adds.
“The weather is cold in our area, and we don’t sleep outside this time of the year. That is why many people were trapped in their houses when the earthquake hit, and they were killed. Everything is destroyed back home, and all our animals are buried in debris. The smell of dead animals fills the air in my village.”
Life before the quake, he says, was stable. “Before the earthquake, we had everything we wanted: A home, livestock, our crops, and land. Now life is in the hospital and tents.”
Women face particular challenges in the aftermath of this disaster, as Taliban laws prevent them from travelling without male guardians – meaning it is hard for them to either get medical assistance or, in the case of female medical workers, to provide it.
The World Health Organization (WHO) asked Taliban authorities last week to lift travel restrictions for Afghan female aid workers, at least, to allow them to travel to help women in difficulties following the earthquake.
“A very big issue now is the increasing paucity of female staff in these places,” Dr Mukta Sharma, the deputy representative of WHO’s Afghanistan office, told the Reuters news agency.
Furthermore, since women have been banned from higher education by the Taliban, the number of qualified female medical staff is dwindling.
Despite these difficulties, the Taliban leadership says it is committed to ensuring that women will be properly treated, by male health workers if necessary.
Haqqani, Kunar’s provincial director for the Ministry of Information and Culture, tells Al Jazeera: “During the emergency situation, the military and volunteers evacuated and cared for everyone. On the second day, UNICEF set up a medical clinic in Nurghal district and they had female doctors as well. We took as many injured people as the clinic could handle there and they were treating everyone, male and female. In any emergency situation, there is no gender-based discrimination; any doctor available will treat any patients coming in. The priority is life saving.”
At a field hospital which has been set up inside the old US barracks by the displacement camp at Khas Kunar, six male doctors and one female doctor, 16 male nurses and 12 female nurses are tending to the injured. Currently, there are 34 patients here, 24 of whom are women and children – most of them were taken to Gamberi from their remote villages by Taliban military helicopters and then transferred the last 50km (30 miles) to the hospital by car.
The hospital’s director, Dr Shahid, who only gave one name, says male doctors and nurses are permitted to treat women and have been doing so without any issue.
From his bed in the field hospital, Azim, a farmer in his mid-40s from Sohail Tangy village, 60km (37 miles) away, is recovering from fractures to his spine and right shoulder.
He fears returning to the devastation at home.
“The earthquake was like a curse from the sky. I don’t want to move back to that hell,” he tells Al Jazeera. “The government should give us land to rebuild our lives. My village has become the centre of destruction. My only request is to give us land somewhere else.”
Azim is still coming to terms with the loss of his loved ones. “Yesterday, my son told me that three of my brothers are dead. Some of my family members are in the Kabul and Jalalabad hospitals. And my wife is in Kabul military hospital,” he says.
Back in the evacuation camp, Stoori says he is holding onto hope, but only just.
“If God blesses us, maybe we can go back to our village before the winter comes,” he says.