KABUL: A roadside bomb killed a journalist and driver after struck a minivan carrying employees of a private Afghan television channel in Kabul on Saturday, killing a journalist and the driver, the network’s news director and officials said.
The pair died when the bus carrying 15 employees from Khurshid TV was struck, the channel’s news director Jawed Farhad told AFP.
The interior ministry also confirmed the attack, saying the minivan had been targeted.
“The target of the blast was the vehicle of Khurshid private TV,” a ministry statement said.
Pictures shared on social media showed a white minibus with extensive damage to its front.
It was the second such attack targeting employees of the channel in less than a year.
In August 2019, two passers-by were killed when a “sticky bomb” — a type of homemade explosive attached to vehicles with magnets — struck a similar Khurshid TV van.
No group claimed responsibility for that attack, which wounded three employees, and no one immediately claimed Saturday’s attack.
Afghanistan is one of the world’s deadliest places for journalists, who face many risks covering the country’s long conflict and who have sometimes been targeted for doing their job.
The latest attack comes during an overall drop in violence across much of Afghanistan since the Taliban offered a surprise three-day cease-fire on May 24.
While the truce ended on Tuesday night, violence has largely remained low, though Afghan security forces have suffered some attacks that authorities blamed on the Taliban.
Journalist killed in Kabul bomb blast targeting TV workers
https://arab.news/4dchf
Journalist killed in Kabul bomb blast targeting TV workers
- Pictures shared on social media showed a white minibus with extensive damage to its front
- It was the second such attack targeting employees of the channel in less than a year
Disinformation the new enemy in disaster zones, says Red Cross
- “Harmful information and dehumanizing narratives” undermines humanitarian aid and putting lives of aid workers at risk
- Between 2020 and 2024, disasters affected nearly 700 million people, displaced over 105 million, and killed more than 270,000 — doubling the number in need of humanitarian aid
GENEVA: The rise of disinformation is undermining humanitarian aid and putting lives at risk, while disasters are affecting ever more people, the Red Cross warned Thursday.
“Between 2020 and 2024, disasters affected nearly 700 million people, caused more than 105 million displacements, and claimed over 270,000 lives,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
The number of people needing humanitarian assistance more than doubled in the same timeframe, the IFRC said in its World Disasters Report 2026.
But the world’s largest humanitarian network said that “harmful information and dehumanizing narratives” were increasingly undermining trust, putting the lives of aid workers at risk.
“In polarized and politically-charged contexts, humanitarian principles such as neutrality and impartiality are increasingly misunderstood, misrepresented or deliberately attacked online,” it said.
The IFRC has more than 17 million volunteers across more than 191 countries.
“In every crisis I have witnessed, information is as essential as food, water and shelter,” said the Geneva-based federation’s secretary general Jagan Chapagain.
“But when information is false, misleading or deliberately manipulated, it can deepen fear, obstruct humanitarian access and cost lives.”
He said harmful information was not a new phenomenon, but it was now moving “with unprecedented speed and reach.”
Chapagain said digital platforms were proving “fertile ground for lies.”
The IFRC report said the challenge nowadays was no longer about the availability of information but its reliability, noting that the production and spread of disinformation was easily amplified by artificial intelligence.
- ‘Life and death’ -
The report cited numerous recent examples of harmful information hampering crisis response.
During the 2024 floods in Valencia, false narratives online accused the Spanish Red Cross of diverting aid to migrants, which in turn fueled “xenophobic attacks on volunteers,” the IFRC said.
In South Sudan, rumors that humanitarian agencies were distributing poisoned food “caused people to avoid life-saving aid” and led to threats against Red Cross staff.
In Lebanon, false claims that volunteers were spreading Covid-19, favoring certain groups with aid and providing unsafe cholera vaccines eroded trust and endangered vulnerable communities, the IFRC said.
And in Bangladesh, during political unrest, volunteers faced “widespread accusations of inaction and political alignment,” leading to harassment and reputational damage, it added.
Similar events were registered by the IFRC in Sudan, Myanmar, Peru, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Kenya and Bulgaria.
The report underlined that around 94 percent of disasters were handled by national authorities and local communities, without international interventions.
“However, while volunteers, local leaders and community media are often the most trusted messengers, they operate in increasingly hostile and polarized information environments,” the IFRC said.
The federation called on governments, tech firms, humanitarian agencies and local actors to recognize that reliable information “is a matter of life and death.”
“Without trust, people are less likely to prepare, seek help or follow life-saving guidance; with it, communities act together, absorb shocks and recover more effectively,” said Chapagain.
The organization urged technology platforms to prioritize authoritative information from trusted sources in crisis contexts, and transparently moderate harmful content.
And it said humanitarian agencies needed to make preparing to deal with disinformation “a core function” of their operations, with trained teams and analytics.
