KABUL // Hamid Karzai, the Afghanistan president has blamed a Pakistan-based group for bomb attacks in three Afghan cities that killed at least 59 people on Tuesday, an allegation that could stoke new tensions with Islamabad.
The blasts were the worst sectarian attacks in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government. The largest explosion, at a shrine in the heart of Kabul, killed 55.
"Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which is based in Pakistan has claimed responsibility for this attack ... We will investigate the issue very carefully and will discuss it with the Pakistani government," Mr Karzai said, after cancelling meetings in London to rush home and meet the victims.
"This is the first time in Afghanistan, on a very important religious day, they have acted. Without doubt it is hostile to Afghanistan, the people of Afghanistan, and Islam," Mr Karzai said at a hospital treating victims of the Kabul blast.
In a separate incident, a roadside mine killed 19 civilians and injured another five when it exploded in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, the provincial government said, taking the death toll to 78 in just two days.
Afghans have previously been spared the large-scale sectarian attacks that regularly trouble Iraq and neighbouring Pakistan, but now face the grim prospect of a new type of bloodshed being added to the dangers of daily life.
A caller who identified himself as a spokesman for the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al-Alami claimed responsibility for Tuesday's suicide attack in Kabul, in a telephone call to a Reuters reporter hours after the attack.
The caller, who identified himself as Abu Bakar Mansoor, said the Shiite community was the target.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is one of Pakistan's most violent anti-Shiite groups and part of an Al Qaeda-linked nexus of militants. It has also forged strong ties with militant groups operating in the tribal areas on the Afghan border.
The group emerged as a sectarian force in the 1990s, targeting minority Shiite Muslims, but graduated to more audacious attacks, including the lorry bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel in 2008 in which 55 people were killed.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), responsible for security across much of the country, says it is turning the tide against the Taliban.
But if Tuesday's bombing sets a precedent for violence between the Sunni Muslim majority and the Shiite minority, it would severely stretch army and police resources.
The interior ministry has blamed "the Taliban and terrorists", without giving further details, while the Taliban strongly condemned the bombings.
"We want the Afghan government, international community and those who are involved in Afghanistan's affairs to reveal those who were behind the attack," said Yazdan Parast, another Shiite Muslim attending the ceremony.
Among those killed in Tuesday's attacks was a US citizen, the American embassy in Kabul said in a statement. It gave no further details.
At the German conference, the Afghan government's western backers, who have spent billions of dollars on the country since the US-led overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001, pledged to support the country beyond the end-2014 deadline for the withdrawal of foreign combat troops.
Afghanistan has said that it will not be able to afford the army and police force it needs after 2014 without international help, and Tuesday's attack is likely to reinforce fears about the ability of Afghan forces to cope with violence after Isaf has fully handed over security.
Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
Result
6.30pm: Al Maktoum Challenge Round-3 – Group 1 (PA) $65,000 (Dirt) 2,000m; Winner: Brraq, Ryan Curatolo (jockey), Jean-Claude Pecout (trainer)
7.05pm: Handicap (TB) $65,000 (Turf) 1,800m; Winner: Bright Melody, James Doyle, Charlie Appleby
7.40pm: Meydan Classic – Listed (TB) $88,000 (T) 1,600m; Winner: Naval Crown, Mickael Barzalona, Charlie Appleby
8.15pm: Nad Al Sheba Trophy – Group 3 (TB) $195,000 (T) 2,810m; Winner: Volcanic Sky, Frankie Dettori, Saeed bin Suroor
8.50pm: Dubai Millennium Stakes – Group 3 (TB) $130,000 (T) 2,000m; Winner: Star Safari, William Buick, Charlie Appleby
9.25pm: Meydan Challenge – Listed Handicap (TB) $88,000 (T) 1,400m; Winner: Zainhom, Dane O’Neill, Musabah Al Muhairi
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Director: Goran Hugo Olsson
Rating: 5/5
Company%20Profile
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Juliet, Naked
Dir: Jesse Peretz
Starring: Chris O'Dowd, Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke
Two stars
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
The%20specs
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UNpaid bills:
Countries with largest unpaid bill for UN budget in 2019
USA – $1.055 billion
Brazil – $143 million
Argentina – $52 million
Mexico – $36 million
Iran – $27 million
Israel – $18 million
Venezuela – $17 million
Korea – $10 million
Countries with largest unpaid bill for UN peacekeeping operations in 2019
USA – $2.38 billion
Brazil – $287 million
Spain – $110 million
France – $103 million
Ukraine – $100 million
How to help
Call the hotline on 0502955999 or send "thenational" to the following numbers:
2289 - Dh10
2252 - Dh50
6025 - Dh20
6027 - Dh100
6026 - Dh200
Padmaavat
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Starring: Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor, Jim Sarbh
3.5/5
