Skip to footer

Attacks across Afghanistan kill at least 15, election recount paused

Assaults in three Afghan provinces killed at least 15 people Saturday, while remarks by a Taliban leader seemed to indicate fighting will continue as long as the US has a presence in the country.

|
Allauddin Khan/AP
An Afghanistan police officer searches a passenger's plastic bags at a checkpoint in Kandahar province, south of Kabul, June 13. On Saturday, Taliban assaults on 15 checkpoints in Kandahar, as well as attacks in two other provinces killed at least 15 people.
  • By Rahim Faiez Associated Press

| Kabul, Afghanistan

Attacks across Afghanistan, including hundreds of Taliban fighters swarming police checkpoints across the south, killed at least 15 people Saturday, officials said, as a recount in the country's presidential election halted before a major holiday.

The Taliban attacks focused on Kandahar province, where Taliban fighters killed six police officers – including a district police chief – in assaults on some 15 checkpoints, said Dawa Khan Menapal, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Menapal said reinforcements later arrived to combat the Taliban fighters and the combat continued into Saturday night.

In Helmand province, a bomb hidden inside a motorcycle killed four civilians and wounded four others in Marjah district, said Omer Zwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand province. In Kabul, a bomb blast killed an army officer and wounded his driver, police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai.

In Herat province, gunmen on motorcycles shot and killed two army officers in the city of Herat, said a provincial security official who spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to brief journalists.

In a blow to hoped-for peace talks, the Taliban's reclusive leader warned Friday that a bilateral security pact allowing thousands of U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the end of this year will mean more fighting. Mullah Mohammad Omar called on both Afghan presidential candidates not to sign the agreement.

"We believe the war in Afghanistan will come to an end when all foreign invaders pull out of Afghanistan and a holy Islamic and independent regime prevails here. Presence of limited number of troops under whatever title it may be will mean continuation of occupation and the war," Mullah Omar said in a message issued ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The message was translated into Dari, Arabic, English and Pashto.

Meanwhile in Kabul, Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission stopped a recount in the runoff presidential election. Commission chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani told reporters that the recount will resume later next week after Eid al-Fitr .

Unofficial and disputed preliminary results of the June 14 runoff election showed former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai well ahead of his rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

But since fraud was alleged on both sides, a deal negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry provides that every one of the 8 million ballots will be audited under national and international supervision over three or four weeks.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Attacks across Afghanistan kill at least 15, election recount paused
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0726/Attacks-across-Afghanistan-kill-at-least-15-election-recount-paused
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe