Metro
Senior Taliban commander killed in hospital attack
A Taliban military commander was killed when his men responded to an Islamic State suicide bomb and gun attack on a hospital in the Afghan capital, officials said Wednesday.
The Taliban spent 20 years waging an insurgency against the ousted US-backed government before seizing control of Kabul in August.
Now they face the struggle of bringing stability to Afghanistan, which has been hit in recent weeks by a series of bloody assaults claimed by rivals, the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K).
At least 19 people were killed in Tuesday’s attack on Kabul’s main military hospital, according to a health ministry official who did not want to be named.
Hamdullah Mokhlis, a member of the hardline Haqqani network and an officer in the Badri Corps special forces, is the most senior figure to have been killed since the Taliban seized Kabul.
“When he got the information that Sardar Daud Khan Hospital was under attack, Maulvi Hamdullah (Mokhlis), the commander of the Kabul corps, immediately rushed to the scene,” the Taliban media official said.
“We tried to stop him but he laughed. Later we found out that he was martyred in the face-to-face fight at the hospital,” he added.
The attack began with a suicide bomber detonating his explosives near the facility’s entrance before gunmen broke into the hospital grounds.
As part of the response, Kabul’s new rulers deployed their special forces to the roof of the building in a helicopter captured from Afghanistan’s former US-backed government.
In a statement released on its Telegram channels, IS-K said that “five Islamic State group fighters carried out simultaneous coordinated attacks” on the site.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid played down the death toll and said the attack was put down within 15 minutes thanks to the rapid intervention.
‘Our Lives Were Ending’
File photo: Taliban fighters atop vehicles with Taliban flags parade along a road to celebrate after the US pulled all its troops out of Afghanistan, in Kandahar on September 1, 2021, following the Talibans military takeover of the country. (Photo by JAVED TANVEER / AFP)
Although both IS and the Taliban are hardline Sunni Islamist militants, they differ on details of religion and strategy.
IS have claimed four mass casualty attacks since the Taliban takeover on August 15, including suicide bomb blasts targeting Shiite Muslim mosques. The group regards Shiite Muslims as heretics.
The hospital, which treats wounded soldiers from both the Taliban and former Afghan security forces, was previously attacked in 2017, when gunmen disguised as medical personnel killed at least 30 people in an hours-long siege.
The 2017 attack was also claimed by the Islamic State group, and the Taliban denied responsibility.
Witnesses on Tuesday described to AFP a scene of terror, as patients and doctors tried to lock themselves in upper-storey rooms and gunfire erupted.
One woman who had been trapped in the hospital when the attack began told AFP how she and her friend “felt we were going to die, that our lives were ending”.
“There was a blast at the door,” Rowana Dawari, a poet and lecturer, told AFP.
“Daesh came and started firing, we were stuck. We heard firing, glass breaking. We locked ourselves in a bathroom,” she said, referring to IS by its local name.
“Later, Taliban came and we saw they were with our doctors, so we knew it was OK.”
Two Catholic nuns, Vincentia Maria Nwankwo and Grace Mariette Okoli, were abducted by gunmen along Ufuma Road in Orumba North Local Government Area of Anambra State.
The incident occurred late Tuesday evening as the nuns were returning from a vocational association meeting held in Ogboji community, Orumba North LGA.
The Secretary-General of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Maria Ikeotuonye, confirmed the abduction in a statement on Wednesday, calling for prayers for their safe release.
“With sadness, we write to inform the general public of the kidnap of our two sisters, Vincentia Maria Nwankwo and Grace Mariette Okoli, yesterday evening, Tuesday, 7 January, 2025,” the statement read.
Ikeotuonye further revealed that Sister Nwankwo is the Principal of Archbishop Charles Harvey Memorial Model Secondary School in Ufuma, while Sister Okoli teaches at Immaculata Girls Model Secondary School in Nnewi.
“We commend our Sisters to the powerful intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary for their speedy release from the hands of their kidnappers,” she added. “We solicit your fervent prayers and supplications to God that they may be released as soon as possible and come back to us safe and sound.”
The Anambra State Police Command also confirmed the incident. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Command’s spokesperson, Tochukwu Ikenga, said a joint operation has been launched to rescue the victims.
“Police-led joint operation is already ongoing for the possible rescue of two Catholic nuns allegedly kidnapped along Ufuma Road, Orumba North Local Government,” Ikenga said.
He noted that the Commissioner of Police, CP Nnaghe Itam, alongside the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of operations, had visited the scene to conduct a spot assessment.
“The command is already working with some clues for the possible arrest of the suspects and rescue of the victims. Further details shall be communicated, please,” Ikenga added.
Tragedy struck in Owo, the headquarters of Owo Local Government Area of Ondo State, as a violent clash between two suspected cult groups left four people dead.
One of the victims has been identified as 52-year-old Fisayo Oladipupo, a former youth leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Owo LGA.
According to sources within the community, Oladipupo was reportedly shot dead in the early hours of Monday by assailants suspected to be cultists.
His body has been deposited at the morgue of the Federal Medical Centre in Owo.
Confirming the incident, the Spokesperson for the Ondo State Police Command, Funmilayo Odunlami-Omisanya, stated that four people were killed in the violent encounter.
However, she added that the police are yet to verify whether Oladipupo, the APC chieftain, is among the deceased.
She assured the public that with the prompt intervention of a police team dispatched to the scene, normalcy has returned to the area.
A former US lawmaker who was Donald Trump’s first pick to run the Justice Department paid for sex numerous times, including with an underage girl, according to a congressional report released Monday.
Matt Gaetz also regularly used cocaine and ecstasy, and bought marijuana from his Capitol Hill office, according to the 37-page document, the culmination of a long-running probe by the House Ethics Committee.
“The committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” panel investigators wrote, according to reports.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing — pointing to the Justice Department’s decision not to bring charges against him in 2023 after a criminal probe — and the report came out despite him suing the committee to block its release.
Congressional investigators found that the 42-year-old broke multiple Florida laws on sexual misconduct, although they cleared him of federal sex trafficking violations.
The report listed payments by Gaetz totaling more than $90,000 to 12 women “likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use” between 2017 and 2020.
They focused on a 2018 trip to the Bahamas during which Gaetz is alleged to have had sex with four women and took the ecstasy.
The ex-congressman is an incendiary figure with few friends on Capitol Hill, but was a staunch Trump loyalist and a favorite of the president-elect’s ardent supporters.
He resigned from Congress in November after Trump nominated him for US attorney general.
– ‘High school’ victim –
The allegations had been openly discussed for years and Gaetz withdrew from consideration when it became clear he lacked sufficient backing from Republicans to win Senate confirmation.
Gaetz posted a series of tweets refuting some of the allegations in the report, including that he paid for sex.
“Giving funds to someone you are dating — that they didn’t ask for — and that isn’t ‘charged’ for sex is now prostitution?!?” he posted on X.
“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses.”
Women told congressional investigators they were paid for sex at parties and other events by Gaetz and his friend Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Florida who was jailed for 11 years.
One encounter allegedly involved a 17-year-old girl, who told the committee she had sex with Gaetz twice at a July 2017 party.
“Victim A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex. At the time, she had just completed her junior year of high school,” the report says.
All the women who testified said the sexual encounters with Gaetz were consensual. Gaetz denied having sex with a minor in written responses to the committee.
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