KABUL: A surge of Taliban wins in northern Afghanistan has caused some countries to close their north Afghan consulates, while across the border in Tajikistan reservists are being called up to reinforce its southern border, according to officials and reports on Tuesday.
Nearly 1,000 Afghan soldiers have fled the Taliban advances by crossing the border into Tajikistan, according to reports from Tajikistan.
A statement on Monday from the Tajik government said President Emomali Rakhmon has ordered the mobilization of 20,000 military reservists to strengthen its border with Afghanistan.
The Afghan military exodus comes as Taliban overrun most districts in northeastern Badakhshan province. Many of the districts collapsed without a fight but along the province’s northern border with Tajikistan, hundreds of Afghan National Security and Defense Forces crossed the border seeking safety.
The consulates of Turkey and Russia have reportedly closed in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province, and Afghanistan’s fourth-largest city. Iran said it has restricted activities at its consulate in the city. There has been fighting in Balkh province, but the provincial capital has been relatively peaceful.
The consulates of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India and Pakistan have reduced their services, Balkh provincial governor’s spokesman Munir Farhad said Tuesday. He said Turkey and Russia had closed their consulates and their diplomats had left the city.
The Tajik government said Afghan troops were being allowed to cross on humanitarian grounds but the border posts on the Tajik side were in control of Tajik forces and there was no fighting with Taliban from the Tajik side.
The Taliban march gains momentum only days after the United States vacated Bagram Airfield, just an hour drive north of the capital and a sure sign that the majority of its troops had left Afghanistan.
The US withdrew from what had been the epicenter of the US-led coalition’s nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan by s hutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, according Afghan military officials said.
Meanwhile Moscow also weighed in on Monday with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying there is “heightened concern” over the fighting but Russia has no plans to send troops to assist its former republic.
“We have repeatedly said many times that after the withdrawal of the Americans and their allies from Afghanistan, the development of the situation in this country is a matter of our heightened concern,” Peskov said. “We’re monitoring it very closely and are noting that destabilization (of the situation) is taking place, unfortunately.”
Meanwhile, Tajikistan’s state news agency Khovar counted 1,037 Afghan military personnel who entered Tajikistan while fleeing for their lives. It said Monday they used seven of the crossings along the countries’ shared 910-kilometer (565-mile) border.
The Taliban have made relentless territorial wins since mid-April, when President Joe Biden announced the last 2,500-3,500 US soldiers and 7,000 allied NATO soldiers would leave Afghanistan.
Most have left quietly already, well before the announced deadline in September. The full withdrawal is not expected to be completed until the end of August while agreements to protect Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport are settled.
Meanwhile, the months-old peace talks being held in Qatar between Taliban and a fractious Afghan government have all but stopped even as both sides say they want a negotiated end to the decades-long conflict.
With their victories in northern and southern Afghanistan, the Taliban are putting pressure on provincial cities and gaining control of key transportation routes.
The Afghan government has resurrected militias mostly loyal to Kabul-allied warlords but with a history of brutal violence that has raised the specter of civil war similar to the fighting that devastated Kabul in the early 1990s.
The Taliban wins in northern Afghanistan are particularly significant because that part of the country is the traditional stronghold of US-allied warlords and the scene of the Taliban’s initial widespread losses in 2001 when the US-led coalition launched its battle to unseat the religious movement.
Taliban wins in northern Afghanistan forces closure of consulates
https://arab.news/mherj
Taliban wins in northern Afghanistan forces closure of consulates
- Nearly 1,000 Afghan soldiers have fled the Taliban advances by crossing the border into Tajikistan
- The Taliban victories in northern Afghanistan are particularly significant
UK Mideast minister: Israel’s actions leaving its allies ‘pretty challenged’
- Lord Ahmad: Many are uneasy about adherence to international humanitarian law
- UK FM opposes arms ban despite ‘grave concerns around humanitarian access issue in Gaza’
LONDON: The UK’s Middle East minister has warned that the war in Gaza is causing Israel’s allies numerous problems over allegations that it has broken international humanitarian law, the Daily Telegraph reported.
“I think Israel is really leaving many of its partners, including ourselves, pretty challenged on where we are currently on the issue of IHL, and how they are fulfilling their obligations,” Lord Ahmad told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
“Israel has obligations. We are allies of Israel and as a constructive friend to Israel, we’d land these points very directly to them.”
On Sunday, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said an arms ban against Israel would not be “a wise path.”
In April, he said the UK’s stance on selling arms to Israel was “consistent with the advice that I and other ministers have received, and as ever we will keep the position under review.
“Let me be clear, though, we continue to have grave concerns around the humanitarian access issue in Gaza.”
UK law requires a ban on the sale of weapons to states that breach or fall short of adhering to international humanitarian law.
So far Canada, Japan, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands have suspended arms sales to Israel. The UK’s main opposition Labour Party called for a halt on exports this week.
8 dead, at least 40 injured as farmworkers’ bus overturns in central Florida
- The bus was transporting 53 farmworkers at about 6:40 a.m. when it collided with a truck
- The workers were being transported to Cannon Farms in Dunellon
FLORIDA: A bus carrying farmworkers in central Florida overturned on Tuesday, killing eight people and injuring about 40 other passengers, authorities said.
The bus was transporting 53 farmworkers at about 6:40 a.m. when it collided with a truck in Marion County, north of Orlando, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
Authorities say the bus swerved off State Road 40, a straight but somewhat hilly two-lane road that passes through farms. It crashed through a fence and ended up on its side in a field. The workers were being transported to Cannon Farms in Dunellon, which has been harvesting watermelons.
Photos taken by the Ocala Star-Banner at the scene show the bus lying on its side with both its emergency rear door and top hatch open. The truck that hit it shows extensive damage to its driver’s side.
There is no immediate indication that weather was a factor.
“We will be closed today out of respect to the losses and injuries endured early this morning in the accident that took place to the Olvera Trucking Harvesting Corp.,” Cannon Farms announced on its Facebook page. “Please pray with us for the families and the loved ones involved in this tragic accident. We appreciate your understanding at this difficult time.”
Cannon Farms describes itself as a family owned commercial farming operation that has farmed its land for more than 100 years, focusing now on peanuts and watermelons, which it sends to grocery stores across the US and Canada.
No one answered the phone at Olvera Trucking on Tuesday afternoon. The company had recently advertised for a temporary driver to bus workers to watermelon fields. The driver would then operate harvesting equipment. The pay was $14.77 an hour.
Harvard students end protest as university agrees to discuss Middle East conflict
- The student protest group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said in a statement that the encampment “outlasted its utility with respect to our demands”
- Students at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: Protesters against the war between Israel and Hamas were voluntarily taking down their tents in Harvard Yard on Tuesday after university officials agreed to discuss their questions about the endowment, bringing a peaceful end to the kinds of demonstrations that were broken up by police on other campuses.
The student protest group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine said in a statement that the encampment “outlasted its utility with respect to our demands.” Meanwhile, Harvard University interim President Alan Garber agreed to pursue a meeting between protesters and university officials regarding the students’ questions.
Students at many college campuses this spring set up similar encampments, calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it.
The latest Israel-Hamas war began when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking an additional 250 hostage. Palestinian militants still hold about 100 captives, and Israel’s military has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Harvard said its president and the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Hopi Hoekstra, will meet with the protesters to discuss the conflict in the Middle East.
The protesters said they worked out an agreement to meet with university officials including the Harvard Management Company, which oversees the world’s largest academic endowment, valued at about $50 billion.
The protesters’ statement said the students will set an agenda including discussions on disclosure, divestment, and reinvestment, and the creation of a Center for Palestine Studies. The students also said that Harvard has offered to retract suspensions of more than 20 students and student workers and back down on disciplinary measures faced by 60 more.
“Since its establishment three weeks ago, the encampment has both broadened and deepened Palestine solidarity organizing on campus,” a spokesperson for the protesters said. “It has moved the needle on disclosure and divestment at Harvard.”
At least 15 injured in Russian strike on high-rise in Ukraine’s Kharkiv
- A fire broke out at another strike site, and at least ten garages were affected
KYIV: A Russian air attack on Kharkiv city center in Ukraine hit a high-rise residential building, injuring at least 15 people, including two children, local officials said on Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear what kind of weapon was used in the strike, but it landed on the 10th floor of the 12-story apartment block, officials said on Telegram.
Ihor Terekhov, the city’s major, said rescuers were searching for the injured.
One person was hospitalized in a serious condition, Oleh Syniehubov, the regional governor, added.
A fire broke out at another strike site, and at least ten garages were affected, Syniehubov said.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, and the surrounding region have long been targeted by Russian attacks but the strikes have become more intense in recent months, hitting civilian and energy infrastructure.
Two French prison officers killed in inmate's escape
- The incident took place late morning at a road toll in Incarville in the Eure region of northern France
- The inmate was being transported between the towns of Rouen and Evreux in Normandy
ROUEN, France: Gunmen on Tuesday attacked a prison van at a motorway toll in northern France, killing at least two prison officers and freeing a convict who had been jailed last week.
President Emmanuel Macron vowed that everything would be done to find those behind the attack as hundreds of members of the security forces were deployed for a manhunt to find the attackers and the inmate who were all still at large.
Two prison officers were killed in the attack and two others are receiving urgent medical care, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.
The incident took place late morning at a road toll in Incarville in the Eure region of northern France, a source close to the case added.
The inmate was being transported between the towns of Rouen and Evreux in Normandy.
A police source said several individuals, who arrived in two vehicles, rammed the police van and then fled.
One of them was wounded, the police source said.
It was not immediately clear how many attackers there were in total.
"Everything is being done to find the perpetrators of this crime," Macron wrote on X.
"We will be uncompromising," he added, describing the attack as a "shock".
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti immediately headed to a crisis cell at his ministry.
"These are people for whom life counts for nothing. They will be arrested, they will be judged and they will be punished according to the crime they committed," he said.
Both the officers killed were men and they were the first prison officers to be killed in the line of duty since 1992, he added.
One of them was married and had two children while the other "left a wife five months pregnant", he said.
"I am frozen with horror at the veritable carnage that took place at the Incarville toll," said Alexandre Rassaert, the head of the Eure region council.
"I hope with all my heart that that the team of killers which carried out this bloody attack will be arrested quickly."
A unit of the GIGN elite police force has been despatched to apprehend the suspects.
Traffic was stopped on the A154 motorway where the incident took place.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X he had ordered the activation of France's Epervier plan, a special operation launched by the gendarmerie in such situations.
"All means are being used to find these criminals. On my instructions, several hundred police officers and gendarmes were mobilised," he said.
Prosecutor Beccuau named the inmate as Mohamed Amra, born in 1994, saying that last week he had been convicted of aggravated robbery and also charged in a case of abduction leading to death.
The case has been handed to prosecutors from France's office for the fight against organised crime known by their acronym JUNALCO.
Law and order is a major issue in French politics ahead of next month's European elections and the incident sparked fierce reactions from politicians, especially the far right.
"It is real savagery that hits France every day," said Jordan Bardella, the top candidate for the far-right National Rally (RN) which is leading opinion polls for the elections.
