Tolo Information, a information community in Afghanistan, published footage on Twitter that it stated confirmed folks wounded within the assault being taken on stretchers to a public hospital in Pul-e-Khumri, a metropolis about 140 miles north of Kabul, the capital.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations secretary normal’s deputy particular consultant for Afghanistan, referred to as for an investigation into the assault and described it as “heinous.”
“It’s repugnant that a company that works to clear land mines and different explosives and higher the lives of susceptible folks may very well be focused,” he stated in an announcement.
The HALO Belief started working in Afghanistan in 1988. Its discipline groups clear land mines, get rid of unexploded ordnance present in bombs and bullets, and construct services to retailer weapons and different weapons safely. The group has packages in 26 international locations and territories, together with in Iraq, the place it started working in 2018.
The HALO program in Afghanistan, which began months earlier than the Soviet Military pulled overseas in 1989, employs greater than 2,600 native workers members and stays the group’s largest operation on this planet. HALO says on its web site that over the previous 30 years, it has labored with the Afghan authorities to make almost 80 p.c of the nation’s recorded minefields and battlefields secure.
Nonetheless, the group says, an space of Afghanistan as giant as Chicago nonetheless must be cleared.
Diana, Princess of Wales, referred to as consideration to HALO’s work in 1997, when she walked through a live minefield in Angola — as soon as dwelling to one of the vital heated Chilly Conflict conflicts in Africa — to spotlight the hazard of mines all over the world.
Diana’s youngest son, Prince Harry, retraced her steps in 2019 throughout a visit by way of the continent along with his spouse, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and their son. HALO stated on the time that it had cleared about 100,000 mines in Angola since Diana’s go to.