A child of 10 was one of three civilians who died during a botched Taliban attack on the Afghan President. Peter Beaumont reports from Kabul in The Observor, UK:
Syed Ali was playing on the roof of his mud-brick house when the killers came for Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai last week. Karzai survived the attack on Kabul’s broad parade ground. Ten-year-old Syed Ali, a kilometre away watching his mother cleaning almond shells to supplement the family’s winter fuel, died, with two others, when he was hit by a stray bullet.
Amid the furore of how a plot - apparently known of in advance - could have come so close to killing Karzai, the death of Syed Ali has all but been forgotten. An official from the President’s office came to see the family and said he would come again. When I met the family, they were still waiting for his return.
His mother can barely speak; two days of crying has reduced her voice to a croak.
