Afghan suicide attack 'kills 11'

31 July 2011 Last updated at 08:40 GMT The attack targeted the gate of the police headquarters in Lashkar Gah

Ten Afghan policemen and a child have been killed in a suicide attack in the southern Afghan city of Lashkar Gah, officials say.

The attacker targeted the gate of the police headquarters in the city, the capital of Helmand province.

The Taliban said it had carried out the attack, which also wounded 12 people.

Responsibility for Lashkar Gah was recently handed to Afghan forces as part of a plan to return all security to local forces by the end of 2014.

High-profile raids

The attack reportedly targeted a joint Afghan police and army patrol at the compound.

Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor, said that in addition to those killed nine policemen and three civilians were injured.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told Agence France-Presse news agency the group had carried out the attack.

Helmand remains a flashpoint of the Taliban insurgency and has cost the lives of more foreign troops than any other province.

Lashkar Gah is one of seven initial areas for which security has been handed to Afghan forces as part of the gradual transition of control from the Nato-led Isaf.

Sunday's attack follows a series of high-profile Taliban raids.

Last week an attack by insurgents in the southern Afghan town of Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan province left at least 22 people dead, including BBC reporter Ahmed Omed Khpulwak.

On 27 July, the mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haidar Hameedi, was killed in a suicide attack.

Two weeks earlier, President Hamid Karzai's influential half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, was killed in the same city.

View the original article here

Pakistani child 'forced into suicide vest'

21 June 2011 Last updated at 07:28 GMT Sohana was 'kidnapped' to carry out a suicide attack A nine-year-old girl in Pakistan has said that she was taken and forced to wear an explosive vest in what police say was a planned militant attack.

Sohana Jawed was abducted several days ago from her home in Peshawar and taken to an area near the Afghan border, according to police in Lower Dir.

Sohana told a press conference there that she was put in a suicide vest and told to stand near some soldiers, but she threw the vest off and ran away.

Suicide attacks by girls are rare.

But militants in Pakistan have often recruited young boys to carry out suicide attacks.

Sohana told her story at a press conference organisd by police in Lower Dir on Monday.

But the authorities in Peshawar say they have not received a complaint of a missing girl and have not identified a resident with her name, the Associated Press news agency reports.

'Unconscious'

Sohana said that she was kidnapped by two women while on her way to school and forced into a car carrying two men.

One of the kidnappers put a handkerchief over her mouth and she became unconscious, she said.

When she woke up and started crying, one of the women gave her some biscuits, she said. She said she became unconscious again after consuming the biscuits.

Sohana said when she woke up next she found herself in a house.

" In the evening they gave me bisuits, and then put me to sleep again. When I came to in the morning, they put this this thing on me which wouldn't explode," she said.

Police official Salim Marwat said the vest contained 9kg (20 pounds) of explosives, the AP news agency reports.

"Most likely it had to be detonated through a remote control since a minor was wearing it," he is quoted as saying.

The kidnappers appear to have brought her to a paramilitary checkpoint outside Timergarah, the main town in Lower Dir.

She said that she then started shouting as she approached the checkpoint and threw the vest away.

"I got the chance to release my hand from the woman and run," Sohana said.

Police say they have launched an operation to search the kidnappers who escaped.

View the original article here

Swiss vote backs assisted suicide

15 May 2011 Last updated at 18:34 GMT Exit is Zurich's biggest assisted suicide organisation Voters in Zurich, Switzerland, have rejected proposed bans on assisted suicide and "suicide tourism".

Some 85% of the 278,000 votes cast opposed the ban on assisted suicide and 78% opposed outlawing it for foreigners, Zurich authorities said.

About 200 people commit assisted suicide each year in Zurich, including many foreign visitors.

It has been legal in Switzerland since 1941 if performed by a non-physician with no vested interest in the death.

Assistance can be provided only in a passive way, such as by providing drugs. Active assistance - helping a person to take or administer a product - is prohibited.

'Last resort'

While opinion polls indicated that most Swiss were in favour of assisted suicide, they had also suggested that many were against what has become known as suicide tourism.

Many citizens from Germany, France and other nations come to die in Switzerland because the practice remains illegal abroad.

One local organisation, Dignitas, says it has helped more than 1,000 foreigners to take their own lives.

Another group, Exit, will only help those who are permanently resident in the country - saying the process takes time, and much counselling for both patients and relatives.

Assistance can be provided only in a passive way, such as by providing drugs

Its vice-president, Bernhard Sutter, said the result showed Swiss voters believed in "self-determination at the end of life".

The referendum had offered a proposal to limit suicide tourism, by imposing a residency requirement of at least one year in the Zurich area in order to qualify for the service.

It was backed by two conservative political parties, the Evangelical People's Party and the Federal Democratic Union.

But the major parties of the left and right, including the Swiss People's Party and the Social Democratic Party, had called on their supporters to vote against both motions.

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes, in Geneva, says the size of the vote against a ban on assisted suicide reflects the widely held belief among the Swiss that is their individual right to decide when and how to die.

Their rejection of the proposal to limit assisted suicide to those living in Zurich shows that concerns about suicide tourism carry less weight with voters than their conviction that the right to die is universal, our correspondent says.

But the debate in Switzerland will continue, she adds. Polls show voters do want clearer national legislation setting out conditions under which assisted suicide is permitted.

The Swiss government is planning to revise the country's federal laws on assisted suicide.

It has said it is looking to make sure it was used only as a last resort by the terminally ill, and to limit suicide tourism.

View the original article here