Roadside bomb kills policeman escorting polio staff
Kolachi: A roadside bomb targeted a police vehicle in north-western Pakistan, killing one policeman and injuring three others, officials said.
The officers had been assigned to escort health workers during an anti-polio vaccination campaign in the region.
No-one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast in Kolachi, a town in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.
Pakistan regularly carries out anti-polio drives, despite attacks and threats by the Taliban who claim the vaccination campaign is a Western conspiracy to sterilise children.
Pakistani security forces were searching the area for the attackers, said police official
Wahid Khan.
No polio workers were travelling with the police at the time of the bombing, he added.
The latest attack came after Pakistan on Monday launched a three-day nationwide vaccination campaign against the crippling disease.
Luhansk: Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists have blamed each other for an outbreak of fighting in the country’s rebel-held east.
Ukraine’s military said in a statement that separatists attempted to advance into Ukrainecontrolled territory but were repelled.
It said one Ukrainian soldier was killed and four wounded.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the attack as a “cynical provocation”.
Separatist authorities in the Luhansk region blamed Kiev for the fighting. They claimed it erupted when a group of Ukrainian soldiers tried to make an incursion into rebel-held territory but got into a minefield.
The separatists said two Ukrainian troops were killed and three wounded and the Ukrainian forces launched an artillery barrage to cover their evacuation.
They said Ukrainian shelling damaged civilian infrastructure in the villages of Kirovsk and Donetskiy.
The exchange of gunfire marks the latest spike in hostilities in the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 14,000 people since 2014.
Niger: At least 20 people died in a stampede in Niger as they were being given food and goods at a refugee camp, a local official said.
Diffa governor Issa Lamine said 15 women and five children were killed and 16 other people were injured at the camp in the south-east for people who had fled unrest in neighbouring Nigeria.
Those who did not receive food on Sunday stampeded at the distribution centre early on Monday, Mr Lamine said.
Boko Haram’s decadelong insurgency in northeastern Nigeria has killed tens of thousands and forced many more from their homes.