Kabul, Nov 21: A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people, three government officials said.
Najib Danish, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said more than 70 other people were injured in the attack.
“A suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a wedding hall where Islamic religious scholars had gathered to commemorate the birthday of Prophet Mohammad,” Danish said.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blast.
Paris, Apr 9: More than 1.5 million cases of the novel coronavirus have been registered worldwide, according to a tally compiled by AFP at 0530 GMT Thursday from official sources.
Of the 1,502,478 infections, 87,320 people have died across 192 countries and territories since the epidemic first emerged in China late last year.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections. Many countries are only testing the most serious cases.
Hundreds of thousands of people across the world are joining the anti-racism demonstrations days after the killing of George Floyd in United Sates.
The protests are being held in cities including London, Manchester, Cardiff, Leicester and Sheffield.
Demonstrators attached ropes to the statue of Edward Colston before pulling it down to cheers and roars of approval from the crowd. Images on social media show the statue was eventually rolled into the city's harbour.
It was not the only statue targeted on Sunday. In Brussels, protesters clambered onto the statue of former King Leopold II and chanted "reparations".
The word "shame" was also graffitied on the monument, reference perhaps to the fact that Leopold is said to have reigned over the mass death of 10 million Congolese.
In London, thousands of people congregated around the US embassy for the second day running.
While protests were mainly peaceful, there were some scuffles near the office of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and outside the Parliament gates.
In Hong Kong, about 20 people staged a rally in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement on Sunday outside the US consulate in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.
"It's a global issue," Quinland Anderson, a 28-year-old British citizen living in Hong Kong, told The Associated Press news agency.
"We have to remind ourselves despite all we see going on in the US and in the other parts of the world, Black lives do indeed matter."
Several dozen demonstrators took part in a Black Lives Matter protest held in Tel Aviv's central Rabin Square.
A rally in Rome's sprawling People's Square was noisy but peaceful, with the majority of protesters wearing masks to protect against coronavirus. Participants listened to speeches and held up handmade placards saying "Black Lives Matter" and "It's a White Problem".
In Spain, several thousand people gathered on the streets of Barcelona and at the US embassy in Madrid.
Many in Madrid carried homemade signs reading "Black Lives Matter", "Human rights for all" and "Silence is pro-racist".
"We are not only doing this for our brother George Floyd," said Thimbo Samb, a spokesman for the group that organised the events in Spain mainly through social media. "Here in Europe, in Spain, where we live, we work, we sleep and pay taxes, we also suffer racism."
President Donald Trump gave a new justification for killing Qassim Suleimani, telling a gathering of Republican donors that the top Iranian general was "saying bad things about our country" before the strike, which led to his decision to authorise his killing. "How much are we going to listen to?" Trump said on Friday, according to remarks from a fundraiser obtained by CNN.
With his typical dramatic flourish, Trump recounted the scene as he monitored the strikes from the White House Situation Room when Suleimani was killed. The president spoke in a ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, at a Republican event that raised $10 million for Trump's 2020 campaign.
The January 3 killing of Suleimani prompted Iran to retaliate with missile strikes against US forces in Iraq days later and almost triggered a broad war between the two countries. "They're together sir," Trump said military officials told him. "Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. Two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They're in the car, they're in an armoured vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. Thirty seconds. Ten, 9, 8 ...'"
"Then all of a sudden, boom," he said. "They're gone, sir. Cutting off, I said, where is this guy?" Trump continued. "That was the last I heard from him". It was the most detailed account that Trump has given of the drone strike, which has drawn criticism from some US lawmakers because neither the president nor his advisers have provided public information to back up their statements that Suleimani presented an "imminent" threat to US.
Trump's comments came a day after he warned Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to be "very careful with his words". According to Trump, Khamenei's speech on Friday, in which he attacked the "vicious" US and described UK, France and Germany as "America's lackeys", was a mistake.
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