QUETTA (AP) – A bombing at a crowded bazaar in southwestern Pakistan on Sunday killed at least five people and wounded 16, authorities said amid a surge in violence in this South Asian nation. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in Barkhan, about 600 kilometers (360 miles) northeast of Quetta, the provincial capital. Sajjad Afzal, the local police chief, said the bomb was apparently rigged to a motorcycle and was detonated by remote control. Apart from inflicting casualties, the bombing also left several shops at the market badly damaged. Rescuers took the wounded to hospital, Afzal said. Baluchistan has long struggled with a low-level insurgency by the Baluchistan Liberation Army and other small separatist groups demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad.

 

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ABUJA (Al Jazeera) – Nigerians were still voting on Sunday in a national election in a few parts of the country where technical and other glitches prevented voting from taking place as scheduled on Saturday. Vote counting was already under way in other places during the historically tight race between three frontrunners competing for the presidency of Africa’s most populous nation. Nearly 90 million voters were eligible to vote in Saturday’s election, which was largely peaceful, although isolated violence, delays and technical hitches forced many to wait until the evening, or Sunday, to vote. After two terms under President Muhammadu Buhari, many Nigerians hope a new leader can do a better job of tackling the widespread insecurity, joblessness and growing poverty afflicting their nation. The election pits former Lagos governor and APC candidate Bola Tinubu, 70, against his old rival, former vice president and PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar, who at 76 is on his sixth bid for the nation’s top job. But for the first time since the end of military rule in 1999, a third-party candidate, Labour’s Peter Obi, challenged the APC and PDP dominance with a campaign message of change.

 

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MINSK (Reuters) – Belarus, a Russian ally bordering Ukraine, has as many as 1.5 million potential military personnel outside its armed forces, a senior official was quoted as saying. President Alexander Lukashenko has supported his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in his year-long war with Ukraine. Lukashenko this month ordered the formation of a new volunteer territorial defence force of up to 150,000 people. He has said his army would fight only if Belarus was attacked. “The structures of the organizations, not the Armed Forces, will amount to somewhere up to 1.5 million people in the event of a declaration of martial law and the switch of the economy to a war mode,” said State Secretary of the Security Council Alexander Volfovich, according to the state BelTA news agency.  Belarus has a population of around 9.3 million. The country’s professional army has about 48,000 troops and some 12,000 state border troops, according to the 2022 International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance.

 

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LONDON (Dispatches) – UK’s supermarket shelves have been left bare of fresh fruit and vegetables, particularly tomatoes and cucumbers, which could be the “tip of the iceberg”, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has warned. Certain products are hard to come by in UK supermarkets due to poor weather reducing the harvest in Europe and North Africa, Brexit rules, and lower supplies from UK and Dutch producers hit by the jump in energy bills to heat glasshouses, the Guardian reported on Sunday. “Difficult weather conditions in the South of Europe and Northern Africa have disrupted harvest for some fruit and vegetables, including tomatoes,” said Andrew Opie, director of food & sustainability at the British Retail Consortium. The UK government has pointed the finger at poor weather conditions in Spain and Morocco, key exporting countries, as the main cause of the shortages. However, farmers blame other factors such as the climate crisis, sky-high energy costs, and Brexit. Tony Montalbano, a director of Green Acre Salads in Roydon, Essex, typically produces a million kilograms of baby cucumbers a year, but his glasshouses were standing empty last week. He said he delayed growing his crops this year until March to avoid winter fuel bills of up to £500,000 a month.

 

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YAOUNDE (AP) – At least 19 people were injured in an explosion at a sports event in southwest Cameroon, authorities said. Nine athletes competing in the Mount Cameroon Race of Hope in Buea town were injured, as well as 10 civilians, including a baby, said Bernard Okalia Bikai, governor of the southwest region. The injured were taken to Buea regional hospital and are receiving treatment, he told The Associated Press. The Central African nation has been plagued by fighting since English-speaking separatists launched a rebellion in 2017, with the stated goal of breaking away from the area dominated by the French-speaking majority country and setting up an independent, English-speaking state. The government has accused the separatists of committing atrocities against English-speaking civilians. The conflict has killed more than 3,300 people and displaced more than 750,000 others, according to the UN.