Afghan poll candidate killed:

4 dead in Kashmir shootout Indian police & protesters clash at flashpoint temple Subcontinent

NILACKAL, India, Oct 17, (Agencies): Indian police with batons on Wednesday charged a group of more than one hundred protestors trying to prevent women accessing one of the country’s holiest Hindu sites, an AFP reporter at the scene said.

Demonstrators threw stones at police on the way to the Lord Ayyappa Temple at Sabarimala in the southern state of Kerala, which has been ordered by India’s top court to admit women of all ages from later Wednesday.

Even before the police charge several people could be seen with blood streaming down their faces, suggesting further clashes had taken place with police nearer the temple.

The devotees, most of whom were men, earlier surrounded and intimidated female journalists, including one from AFP. Two other female journalists were reportedly injured.

Last month India’s Supreme Court overturned a ban on all females of menstruating age – judged between 10 and 50 – entering and praying at the hilltop temple.

This enraged traditionalists, including supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata

Modi

Party (BJP).

Kerala’s state government said it would enforce the court ruling, deploying 500 extra police to ensure free access to the remote complex reached by an uphill trek that takes several hours.

An Afghan lawmaker contesting this week’s parliamentary elections was among four people killed on Wednesday by a bomb planted under his office chair, officials said, in an attack claimed by Taleban militants.

Abdul Jabar Qahraman was killed as he prepared for Saturday’s election, a senior government official said, becoming the 10th candidate killed in the past two months, with two more abducted and four wounded by hardline Islamist militants.

“Such brutal acts of the terrorists and their supporters cannot weaken people’s trust in the peaceful and democratic processes,” President Ashraf Ghani said in a statement condemning the attack. The Afghan Taleban claimed responsibility for the blast in the southern province of Helmand, saying in a statement: “We have killed Qahraman, a renowned communist.” (RTRS)