At least 12 people died and another 37 were injured this Sunday when a fuel truck caught fire inside the largest mountain pass in Afghanistan, in the northeast of the country, according to the latest data from the authorities.
The number of bodies rescued in a fire in the Salang tunnel in Afghanistan rises to nineteen. The explosion from unknown causes of a fuel tanker truck on Saturday night spread flames to several vehicles and blanketed the strategic 2.7-kilometre corridor in smoke.
It took the firefighters more than twelve hours to reach the scene of the accident, inside the tunnel, and put out the fire. The emergency services have managed to rescue thirty-seven injured, many of whom have been hospitalized in Charikar.
The Salang Tunnel is the key point of the strategic Salang corridor, which links northern Afghanistan, dominated by Tajiks, with Kabul, the Afghan capital, located a hundred kilometers away. It was built by the Soviet Union in the 1960s and has been a preferred military target throughout the Afghan civil wars, even being dynamited by the Northern Alliance in 1997 to prevent the Taliban advance. To this we must add the frequent snow avalanches that block the mountain pass in winter.
Meanwhile, the Taliban regime could soon find itself with a new hot potato on its hands, due to the demands of a terrorist commando that has made a stronghold in a Pakistani police station. Some fifteen militants from the Pakistan Taliban Movement (TTP) broke into a Bannu Counterterrorism Center yesterday, in the border province of Khaiber-Pajtunwa, where several co-religionists were being interrogated.
After killing two or three of the agents and freeing their own, the insurgent group has made a stronghold at the police station, with a number of hostages that could range between five and ten policemen. The command, which is surrounded by special forces, has circulated this Monday morning the demand for free passage to Afghanistan, by air or land, for them and their hostages, whom they promise to release to the other side of the border. They have also released some disturbing videos from their entrenchment.
The TTP, a Pashtun criminal and terrorist organization not linked to the Afghan Taliban, broke the precarious truce it had with the Islamabad government a few weeks ago.
The UN General Assembly on Sunday denied that representatives of the self-styled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan can occupy the seat of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. In this way, the organization once again unanimously deprives the Taliban of the legitimate representation of their country.
At the behest of the Credentials Committee, the General Assembly has postponed for the second consecutive year a decision on the applications of the Taliban regime - as well as the Burmese military junta - to obtain representation in the United Nations.
Burma will continue to be represented by the ambassador appointed by the previous Executive, deposed by the military in February 2021. The seat of Afghanistan, for its part, will continue in the hands of its current representative, elected by the losers of the Afghan civil war, today mostly in exile.
Also the embassies of Afghanistan - beginning with the one in Madrid - continue to be occupied by the diplomats and employees appointed by the previous regime and they continue to be the ones who issue visas. To this day, it is not clear who pays their salaries.
The UN Credentials Committee is made up of nine countries elected by the General Assembly. Among them are Russia and China, whose position does not exactly coincide with that of the US, another member and main supporter of the late Ashraf Ghani government. In any case, the report leaves the door open to re-examine the issue in the coming months, should the Taliban open up.
In addition to the dispute regarding the representation of Afghanistan and Burma, the Credentials Committee also received two competing requests regarding the representation of Libya. One from the Government of National Unity, with Turkey as the main supporter and headquarters in the capital, Tripoli -currently occupying the seat in the UN- and another from the parallel executive established in the east of the country, with the support of Egypt, Russia, France and United Arab Emirates, among other countries. Also in this case, the Assembly has opted to maintain the status quo.
