Stay home

The interim mayor of Afghanistan's capital said many female city employees have been ordered to stay home by the country's new Taliban rulers.

Hamdullah Namony told reporters yesterday that only women who could not be replaced by men have been permitted to report to work. He said this includes skilled workers in the design and engineering departments as well as female attendants of public toilets for women, reports AP. Namony's comments were another sign that the Taliban are enforcing their harsh interpretation of Islam, including restrictions on women in public life, despite their initial promises of tolerance and inclusion.

In their previous rule in the 1990s, the Taliban had barred girls and women from schools and jobs. The mayor said a final decision about female employees in Kabul municipal departments is still pending, and that they would draw their salaries in the meantime.

He said that before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last month, just under one-third of close to 3,000 city employees were women who worked in all departments.

Meanwhile, a pickup truck carrying Taliban fighters was the target of a bomb in the Afghan city of Jalalabad yesterday, local media reported, a day after at least two people were killed in a series of blasts in the area.

Witnesses said several wounded Taliban fighters were taken to hospital after the explosion, which one journalist said happened near an interchange for transport to and from the capital, Kabul, reports AFP.