I’ve been watching BBC reports in the overnight hours for me, but daytime hours in Afghanistan.
Casualty toll from an apparent car bombing is presently at 80 deaths and 346 wounded.
Widespread damage to an area that includes several embassies. The German and French embassies are damaged, though it is not clear from reports if perhaps those were specifically targeted. Homes are damaged hundreds of metres from the blast site.
It is a start reminder that attacks spread death and destruction in the Islamic world as well.
stark reminder. Damn. Hate it when my typo is a real word and I don’t get the spellcheck reminder.
It was the overnight hours in the States, but the other issue I noted is how much more slowly the US media picked up on this and moved it to a top story. Seemed like the 24 hour news cycle wasn’t updating very well for the media on the west side of the Atlantic.
What is most galling is that Ramadan started this week. That’s likely a reason why no one has outwardly claimed responsibility yet as well. Very sad images today.
Not all outlets have been slow.
My phone woke me in the middle of the night with two reports on this bombing.
One was Al Jazeera. The other was NPR.
Both contained similar quality of information.
And the quantity on this one is supposed to be greater than 500 kg of explosives. As many as you can pack into a septic tank pump truck anyway. Enough to make a crater this deep. Video purportedly taken shortly afterwards. Graphic, view pans over a dead pair of people in a blown up automobile.
Very surprising that embassies aren’t reporting fatalities among their onsite staff. OTOH, the VBIED evidently didn’t make it to its target before detonating.
That’s a HUGE bomb - surface-contact cratering is usually relatively small in comparison to the size of the bomb (it takes a penetrator to really move earth), so a crater THAT huge was truly a stupendous weapon. A septic tanker truck is a horrifying choice of platform - not because of the contents, but because the tank itself will provide major fragmentation, and the tank is high enough (~1 meter) off the ground to put the blast at a very efficient height above ground (‘daisy-cutter’ effect).
Security did its job - and very likely died of it.
Embasy buildings tend to be very well-designed to protect the inhabitants. The German Embassy, though, is reporting the death of a local national whom was a contract guard outside their building.
I don’t think it’s racial. I think it’s more of a weird fixation on meaningless trivialities such as who tweeted what or what some random Kardashian is doing.
Afg. Is a relatively powerless country far away from home where blast often take place. This is a major incident but Unfortunately this is how news headlines work.
It’s the other way around I feel, medias from so-called non-white countries (south asia, middle East, east asia etc.) would give un-necessary importance to anything trivial that happens in what are the white countries in their heads.
Initial reports as per Afghanistan President’s spokesperson suggest that it was carried out by Haqqani network with the help of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI -
Not the Taliban. Whichever group did it almost certainly has links to Saudi Arabia. KSA is the ATM for all the jihadis. Well known to every intelligence agency in the world.
