Taliban Claims Responsibility for Targeting TV Workers

“If they do not stop their evil activities, this will not be the last attack on them”, Zabihullah Mujahid, a religious scholar, said.

An injured victim from yesterday’s suicide attack near the Russian…

The privately owned Moby Group has 15 news-gathering offices throughout Afghanistan and business offices in Dubai.

Observers say the intensifying insurgency highlights a push by the militants to seize more territory in an attempt to wrangle greater concessions during talks.

Tolo News reported that the bomb was detonated by a motorcycle rider who was targeting a civilian bus in the west of the city.

The meeting came less than a week after diplomats from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States met in Kabul and called on the Taliban to resume peace talks with the Afghan government.

Rajab Noorzayi said his daughter Zeinab worked for Kaboora and was on the bus at the time of the attack. “Designating journalists and other civilians as “military targets” does not make them so, and deliberately attacking them constitutes a war crime”. Journalists are vulnerable to threats, intimidation, and violence, particularly in relation to reporting on sensitive issues – including corruption, land grabbing, violence against women, and human rights abuses.

The latest incident follows recent attacks near the Indian, Pakistani and Italian missions in Afghanistan. Biden held a trilateral meeting with Ghani Sharif to help the two neighbors co-operate and co-ordinate on counter-terrorism measures, the White House said.

Tolo News has been one of the most active media operations in the country for years, employing dozens of journalists, many in volatile provinces.

Gen. John Campbell, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, told Congress last fall that between 1,000 and 3,000 active ISIS members were in Afghanistan.

The Taliban has stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan this winter, when fighting usually abates, underscoring a worsening security situation.

The granting of expanded strike authority follows the State Department’s designation this month of IS’s Afghan entity, called “ISIL-K”, or Khorasan, as a foreign terrorist organization.