4 Afghans die in blast outside U.S. Embassy
KABUL, Afghanistan: A suicide car bomb targeting a convoy of foreign troops exploded about 200 yards outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul yesterday, killing at least four Afghan bystanders as people entered the compound for a Thanksgiving Day race. At least 18 others were wounded in the morning attack, said Abdullah Fahim, a Health Ministry spokesman. Police officer Abdul Manan said the explosion was set off by a suicide bomber in a Toyota Corolla. No U.S. Embassy personnel were killed or injured in the blast, an embassy statement said. The Interior Ministry said the bombing targeted a convoy of foreign troops, but it had no additional information. The blast happened on the last day of a visit by a U.N. Security Council delegation. The U.N. had warned its staff of possible terrorist attacks coinciding with the visit.
2 dead, 5 missing after jetliner plunges into sea
PARIS: An Airbus A320 passenger plane crashed off France's southern coast during a maintenance flight yesterday, killing two people and leaving the five others on board missing, authorities said. The airplane had undergone checks at the EAS Industries aircraft maintenance center in the French city of Perpignan, near the border with Spain. The plane was being leased by German charter airline XL Airways and was due to return to service for Air New Zealand next month, officials from those companies said. The jet plunged into the Mediterranean as it was approaching the Perpignan airport, from which it had taken off on a circular flight an hour earlier, France's civil aviation accident investigation bureau said. French and German investigators, as well as civil aviation officials and Airbus experts, were heading to the crash site about 13 miles off the coast, it said. Two bodies were recovered at sea, the local government said. Five boats, two helicopters and a patrol airplane were searching choppy seas for the other five people. .
Taliban are stockpiling opium, U.N. reports
UNITED NATIONS: Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years that the Taliban are cutting back poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, said Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. drug office. Costa made his remarks to reporters last week as his office prepared to release its latest survey of Afghanistan's opium crop. Issued yesterday, the survey showed that poppy cultivation had retreated in much of the country and was now overwhelmingly concentrated in the seven of 34 provinces where the insurgency remains strong, most of those in the south. The result was a 19 percent reduction in the amount of land devoted to opium in Afghanistan, the United Nations found, even though the total tonnage of opium produced dropped by just 6 percent.
