KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at a police parking lot in central Kandahar on Sunday, killing at least seven people, including five police officers and a child, in the fourth attempted or successful suicide bombing there in less than a month. The blast wounded at least 19 people, including 6 police officers, 3...
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Nineteen civilians, some of them women and children, were killed on Wednesday by a mine planted on a highway in southwestern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said. Dawoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the governor of Helmand Province, said the victims were among 24 people crammed aboard a minibus traveling from Lashkar Gah, the...
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A Pakistan-based extremist group claimed responsibility for a series of coordinated bombings aimed at Afghan Shiites on Tuesday, in what many feared was an attempt to further destabilize Afghanistan by adding a new dimension of strife to a country that, though battered by a decade of war, has been free of sectarian conflict....
Kandahār (eller Qandahār) er en by i det sydlige Afghanistan med omkring 200.000 indbyggere (anlået antal fra 1989). Det er den næststørste by i Afghanistan og en vigtig handelsby for især landbrugsprodukter. Der er en international lufthavn og vejforbindelser til bl.a. Quetta i Pakistan. Sammen med Peshawar er Kandahar hovedby for pashtunerne.
Kandahar blev grundlagt i det 4. århundrede f.Kr. af Alexander den Store nær oldtidsbyen Mundigak fra omkring 3000 f.Kr. Byen har været et yndet mål for erobringer på grund af dens strategiske placering i Centralasien for først indiske kejsere, og siden arabere, tyrkere og mongoler.
Stormogulen Babur genforenede Kandahar med Indien i det 16. århundrede. Hans søn Humayun tabte Kandahar til shahen af Persien. Humayuns søn Akbar genvandt Kandahar og Kabul, men de efterfølgende stormoguler tabte området. Fold ud