AFGHANISTAN. Kabul. The Afghan Ariana News anchor Mina Khairi and her mother are among the victims of Thursday afternoon’s blast in Kabul that killed four people, the head of the Ariana News, Sharif Hassanyar said.
Two car bomb blasts in the capital Kabul killed over 14 people on Thursday. All victims were civilians. According to Ariana News, Mina’s sister also sustained serious injuries in that blast.
The blast happened around 1:45 pm in the Pul-e-Sokhta area in PD6 in the west of Kabul city on Thursday evening when Mina along with her mother and sister were leaving for the home in a small bus. Six civilians including two women and a child were also wounded in the blast.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the two blasts.
According to Khairi’s colleagues, she has been working for Ariana News for almost three years now.
The Afghan officials confirmed through DNA tests that two of the victims of the Kabul blast were Khairi and her mother.
In another car bomb blast in the west of Kabul on the same day, five civilians were wounded. A day before, 10 other civilians were killed when a bomb placed in a minibus went off.
On May 7, TOLOnews anchor Nemat Rawan was killed in an attack by unknown armed men in Kandahar.
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3 female employees of Enhikas TV in Nangarhar were also killed by unknown gunmen when leaving for home months on 2 March.
On January 1st, 2021, Voice of Ghor radio station director Besmellah Adel Imaq was shot dead as he was returning home in Firoz Koh, the capital of the central province of Ghor, in western Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Reporters without Borders (RSF) has asked the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to investigate the murders of journalists and media workers in Afghanistan since March 2020.
RSF has asked Bensouda to investigate these murders – which the organization said Wednesday could be regarded as war crimes – under article 15 of the ICC’s Rome statute.
All of these journalists and media workers were targeted because of their work amid an armed conflict that has seen an increase in violence against journalists and civil society in general since early 2020, RSF said in a statement.
