Afghanistan

KHOST, Afghanistan, Oct 10 (NNN-ANA) – Eight suspected members of the Daesh militants, have been arrested in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost province, a provincial official confirmed today.

“Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, arrested eight members of the Daesh group, in surrounding areas of Khost city, capital of Khost in recent days,” Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, head of provincial cultural and information directorate, said.

He said, the arrestees confessed that they were planning to conduct attacks in the province, 150 km in the south-east of Afghanistan’s Kabul.

KABUL, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations children's fund (UNICEF) on Sunday urged the Taliban's caretaker government to resume children's vaccination amid fear of spreading polio and measles in war-affected Afghanistan.

"The health system is about to collapse, we have weeks, not months or years. We will have humanitarian catastrophe," UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Omar Abdi was quoted as saying in a statement on Twitter.

KABUL, Oct 8 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Afghanistan's northeastern Kunduz province on Friday, killing scores of worshippers in the country's third attack this week on a religious institution.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack that state-run Bakhtar news agency said had killed 46 people and wounded 143. Two health officials told Reuters the death toll could be between 70 and 80.

Video footage showed bodies surrounded by debris inside the mosque, which is used by the minority Shi'ite Muslim community.

KABUL, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Taliban forces raided an area west of Kabul and captured four members of an Islamic State cell, the movement's main spokesman said on Wednesday.

The raid, in Paghman district just outside the Afghan capital, followed a bomb attack on a mosque on Sunday claimed by Islamic State, which has mounted a series of operations since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August.

As well as the four prisoners, the raid yielded quantities of weapons and documents, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a message on Twitter.

KABUL, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- More than 3.8 million Afghans received food assistance in September after aid agencies scaled up response to the rising food insecurity in the Asian country, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Afghanistan said on Wednesday.

"In September, more than 3.8 million people received food assistance, 21,000 children aged 6-59 months and 10,000 women received treatment for acute malnutrition, 32,000 people received non-food items including blankets and warm clothes for winter," the agency said in a statement.

06 Oct 2021; MEMO: Afghanistan and Iran yesterday concluded "important" bilateral economic and trade agreements, a spokesman for the Taliban said.

Zabihullah Mujahid, who is also acting deputy minister of information and culture in the interim Afghan government, said in a statement that a meeting was held between Afghan and Iranian officials "with the aim of strengthening economic ties and providing necessary facilities for trade issues between the two countries".

KABUL, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Afghanistan will start issuing passports to its citizens again on Tuesday, a senior official said, following months of delays that hampered attempts by those trying to flee the country after the Taliban seized control in August.

The process, which had slowed even before the Islamist militants' return to power following the withdrawal of U.S. forces, will provide applicants with documents physically identical to those issued by the previous government, the official said.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban forces unlawfully killed 13 ethnic Hazaras, most of them Afghan soldiers who had surrendered to the insurgents, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.

The killings took place in the village of Kahor in Daykundi province in central Afghanistan on Aug. 30, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. Eleven of the victims were members of the Afghan national security forces and two were civilians, among them a 17-year-old girl.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — It wasn’t 7 a.m. yet and already the line outside the police station’s gates was long, with men bringing their complaints and demands for justice to Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers.

Something new they immediately found: The Taliban fighters who are now the policemen don’t demand bribes like police officers did under the U.S-backed government of the past 20 years.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A bomb exploded in the entrance of a mosque in the Afghan capital on Sunday leaving a “number of civilians dead,” a Taliban spokesman said.

The bomb targeted the sprawling Eidgah Mosque in Kabul, where a memorial service was being held for the mother of Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who later tweeted the attack had claimed civilian lives.