9 killed in Afghanistan mine blast
A roadside bomb blast hit a minivan in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing nine civilians and wounding eight others, officials said.
The spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government, Mr Zalmai Ayoubi, said four women and three children were among those who died in the blast in Maywand district of the province. The eight injured people were taken to a hospital run by Nato troops, he said.
Violence has spiked recently in Afghanistan’s volatile south as Taliban insurgents step up attacks ahead of a planned major operation by Nato forces to secure the main city of Kandahar. Mr Ayoubi said the group was travelling from their village toward Kandahar city.
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‘Pak foreign policy should promote peace’
Islamabad: Pakistan’s foreign policy should be calibrated to promote peace in the region, cultivate friendly relations with all nations and enhance exports, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Friday.
Mr Gilani made the remarks during a meeting with foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
He also said that his economic team has framed investor-friendly policies and there is now a “great opportunity for foreign investors to invest in Pakistan”. Foreign businessmen are investing in energy and infrastructure projects but there is an urgent need to bring foreign investment in other sectors of economy, he said. Mr Qureshi apprised the Prime Minister about his meeting with Turkish President Abdullah Gül on the sidelines of a regional summit in Istanbul. —PTI
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Chinese court gives death to school attacker
Beijing: A Chinese court on Friday sentenced to death a man who injured 16 children and a teacher in an April knife attack at a primary school in the south of the country, Xinhua news agency said.
An intermediate court in the city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong province sentenced Chen Kangbing to death for the attack at the Hongfu Primary School, the report said.
“Chen hacked at the children and teacher in a very cruel manner, causing great harm,” Xinhua quoted the court as saying in its verdict. The assault was one of a number that took place in China in a period of less than two months, leaving 17 people dead. —AFP
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HK removes Web page on Tiananmen
Hong Kong: Hong Kong officials said on Friday they have removed a page dedicated to victims of a 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square from a government website, in what democracy activists said is part of a recent wave of political censorship in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.
Hong Kong’s food and environmental hygiene department, which oversees burials, on Thursday launched a website that allows citizens to create pages mourning their loved ones for free. One person set up a page for the victims of the June 1989 military crackdown on student pro-democracy protesters.
—AP
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