Afghanistan

A devastating incident has rocked the southeastern region of Afghanistan, where nine innocent children tragically lost their lives in a horrifying explosion caused by a long-forgotten mine dating back to the Soviet Union's invasion in the 1980s.

In a chilling display of authority, the Taliban carried out a double public execution at a stadium in southeastern Afghanistan, shocking thousands of spectators who witnessed the killing of two convicted individuals.

A Taliban official said journalists were committing "a major sin" by taking pictures, Afghan media reported yesterday.

Television and pictures of living things were banned under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been imposed since authorities took back power in Afghanistan in 2021.

Poppy cultivation and opium production have plunged 95 percent in Afghanistan since Taliban authorities banned the crop, according to a U.N. report published Sunday.

Since returning to power in 2021, Taliban authorities have vowed to end illegal drug production in Afghanistan and in April 2022 banned the cultivation of the poppy plant, from which opium and heroin are made.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban government has said it signed seven mining contracts amounting to $6.5 billion in investment, in the biggest such round of deals since seizing power two years ago.

The seven contracts are with locally based companies, many of whom have foreign partners in countries including China, Iran, and Türkiye.

In a madrassa in the Afghan capital, rows of teenage girls rock back and forth reciting verses of the Koran under the watchful eye of a religious scholar.

The number of Islamic schools has grown across Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, with teenage girls increasingly attending classes after they were banned from secondary schools.

The suspect wanted for the murder of five Afghan nationals in the capital Ankara was caught in Afghanistan by the Turkish police.

A special team was formed by the Ankara police and the Afghan authorities to shed light on the incident.

On this day, August 31, 2021, US forces withdrew from Afghanistan, ending their 20-year presence in the country.
On that occasion, the Russian Embassy in the USA announced that the USA should understand that the war in Afghanistan ended with the defeat of America.

When the ground heaved from last week's earthquake in Afghanistan, Nahim Gul's stone-and-mud house collapsed on top of him.

He clawed through the rubble in the predawn darkness, choking on dust as he searched for his father and two sisters. He doesn't know how many hours of digging passed before he caught a glimpse of their bodies under the ruins. They were dead.

Desperate rescuers battled against the clock and heavy rain on June 24 to reach cut-off areas in eastern Afghanistan after a powerful earthquake killed at least 1,000 people and left thousands more homeless.