MAZAR-I-SHARIF: A roadside bomb killed 11 people in northern Afghanistan, including election workers, officials said yesterday, as reports of violence during the presidential run-off vote mounted.
The victims, including three female election workers and two observers from the campaign team of presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, were travelling a bus after the polls closed on Saturday when the blast ripped through the vehicle.
“The attack killed 11 people. The election workers had finished their job and were heading home,” Samangan provincial governor Khairullah Anosh said.
Akram Begzad, the provincial police chief, confirmed the incident. The attack, in Aybak, the capital of Samangan, was one of more than 150 incidents on election day, though the Taliban failed to launch strikes in any major Afghan city.
More than 50 people were killed in militant attacks during the day, including five members of the same family who died when a Taliban rocket hit a house near a polling station.
Eleven voters in the western province of Herat had their fingers cut off by insurgents, Deputy Interior Minister Ayoub Salangi said.
Islamabad relying more on voluntary blood donors
ISLAMABAD: The government-run Safe Blood Transfusion Programme project director strongly feels Islamabad will become 100 percent reliant on voluntary blood donors before long.
“We expect with the support of the Capital Administration and Development Division and the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Medical University, our programme will grow stronger, firmly establish the culture of voluntary donations among the residents of Islamabad, and ensure that the modern Regional Blood Transfusion Centre being established in the capital city is 100 per cent reliant on the voluntary blood donors,” Professor Hasan Abbas Zaheer said ahead of the World Blood Donor Day was to be marked yesterday.
Agencies
