“Law and order deteriorating” - UN

A large bomb has landed on a boys’ school in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Wednesday. It was fused, but failed to explode, UN officials said.

“Halo Trust under the umbrella of the United Nations Mine Action programme for Afghanistan is on the spot and is looking into ways of defusing it,” Stephanie Bunker, the spokeswoman for the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, told reporters. No further details were available, she said.

Referring to the security situation, Bunker reconfirmed that law and order were deteriorating in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, where there have been incidences of looting by what were first described as non-Afghans, with some references made to Arabs.

One incident had involved a raid on the Islamic relief office in Kandahar, but there were conflicting reports on the identity of those responsible, she said. It was reported by the UN on Saturday that some 20 armed non-Afghans forced their way into the office, and that a fight had broken out when 15 Taliban police intervened after being called by the aid organisation.

In another incident, the International Organisation for Migration reported that its office in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif was looted earlier this week, with two of its staff members beaten and robbed.

While noting how serious the incidents were, Bunker said the lack of clarity as to who was responsible was not surprising given the “poor state of communications with offices in Afghanistan”.

Reports received at the end of last week suggest that non-Afghans living on the outskirts of Kandahar city and elsewhere had begun moving into residential areas. However, Bunker said the UN had now received information that the local authorities had brought the situation under control.