{"id":17181,"date":"2018-10-03T07:25:17","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T07:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17181"},"modified":"2018-10-03T07:25:17","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T07:25:17","slug":"afghanistan-suicide-bomber-targets-election-rally-in-nangarhar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17181","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan: Suicide bomber targets election rally in Nangarhar"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

At least 13 people have been killed and 25 others wounded in a suicide attack at an election campaign rally in the eastern\u00a0<\/span>Nangarhar province in\u00a0<\/span>Afghanistan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The assailant detonated his explosives on Tuesday at a rally by parliamentary candidate Abdul Nasir Mohmmand in the\u00a0Kama district outside the provincial capital of Jalalabad<\/span>, provincial governor spokesman Ataullah Khogyani said.<\/p>\n

The attack, claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also know as ISIS<\/a>), came as campaigning began for parliamentary elections due on October 20.<\/p>\n

“Elders were speaking at the meeting when there was suddenly a huge blast,” Sayed Humayoun, who was attending the meeting, said.<\/p>\n

“I was knocked unconscious but when I opened my eyes there were bodies scattered all around the blast area,” he said, adding that he could see dozens of dead and wounded bodies on the ground.<\/p>\n

Around 250 people were attending the rally, said Sohrab Qaderi, a member of the provincial council.<\/p>\n

Five candidates have been killed in attacks, according to the Independent Election Commission, and there are fears violence will escalate.<\/p>\n

The Taliban<\/a> and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS<\/a>) group have vowed to disrupt the election process as they ramp up attacks across the country.<\/p>\n

More than 2,500 candidates will contest the ballot, which is seen as a test run for next year’s presidential election.<\/p>\n

But preparations for the vote have been in turmoil for months.<\/p>\n

Bureaucratic inefficiency, allegations of fraud and an eleventh-hour pledge for biometric verification of voters threaten to derail the election and any hope of a credible result.<\/p>\n

The international community is pushing hard for the vote to happen before November’s ministerial meeting in Geneva, which the United Nations<\/a> says is a “crucial moment” for the Afghan government and its foreign partners to demonstrate progress.<\/p>\n

Some 54,000 members of Afghanistan’s security forces will be responsible for protecting more than 5,000 polling centres on election day.<\/p>\n

More than 2,000 polling centres that were supposed to open will be closed for security reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least 13 people have been killed and 25 others wounded in a suicide attack at an election campaign rally in the eastern\u00a0Nangarhar province in\u00a0Afghanistan. The assailant detonated his explosives on Tuesday at a rally by parliamentary candidate Abdul Nasir Mohmmand in the\u00a0Kama district outside the provincial capital of Jalalabad, provincial governor spokesman Ataullah Khogyani…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}