Afghanistan is at risk of losing more than 25,000 female teachers and health workers by 2030 if the Taliban-led country’s restrictions on girls’ education and women’s employment are not lifted, according to a new Unicef report released on Monday.

The Taliban has banned women from most public sector jobs and limited girls to receiving an education only until the age of 12.

These restrictions, according to the report, have already affected at least 1 million girls — a figure that is expected to double by 2030 if nothing changes. Unicef called on the Taliban to lift the ban that it imposed after returning to political power in 2021.

Unicef’s “The Cost of Inaction on Girls’ Education and Women’s Labour Force Participation in Afghanistan” report found a rapid decline in qualified women entering the teaching and healthcare sectors.

Up to 20,000 female teachers and 5,400 health workers could be lost by 2030, according to the report, which estimated that this figure is about 25% of Afghanistan’s 2021 workforce. As many as 9,600 health workers could be lost by 2035, it added.

“Afghanistan cannot afford to lose future teachers, nurses, doctors, midwives, and social workers, who sustain essential services,” Unicef Executive Director Catherine Russell said. “This will be the reality if girls continue to be excluded from education.”

Female healthcare workers are required to attend to female patients, and female teachers are preferred for girls in gender-disaggregated schools whenever possible, the report noted.

The growing decrease could have at least a AFN 5.3 billion ($84 million) annual economic impact on Afghanistan’s economy, according to Unicef, which added that this is the equivalent of about 0.5% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Afghanistan’s de facto authorities should safeguard skills training and allow women to participate in the labor market, Unicef said.

• Survivor says passengers were “crushed on top of one another” in impact.
• Victims feared suffocation as bodies piled up inside mangled carriages.
• All deaths reported from commuter, women-only carriage hit hardest.
  

Rescuers were racing to reach survivors Tuesday morning outside Indonesia’s capital Jakarta after two trains collided overnight, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens.

Anna Purba, a spokeswoman for the state-owned KAI rail company, told local television in the early morning hours that seven people had been killed in the crash and 81 were injured.

She said rescuers were working to get to two people still trapped, alive, in the wreckage.

One survivor told AFP of the horrific moments after a long-distance train slammed into the stationary commuter train she was in, trapping people inside mangled carriages.

“I thought I was going to die,” Sausan Sarifah, 29, told AFP from her bed at the RSUD Bekasi hospital, where she was admitted with a broken arm and a deep cut to one thigh.

She was on her way home from work, she said, when her train stopped at the Bekasi Timur station some 25 kilometres (15 miles) from Jakarta.

“It all happened so fast, in a split second,” Sausan recounted.

“There were two announcements from the commuter train. Everyone was ready to get off, and then suddenly there was the sound of the locomotive, really loud,” she said.

“There was no time to get out, and everyone ended up piled up inside the train, crushed on top of one another. I don’t know how the person underneath me is doing.”

She said she had feared suffocating to death in the human pile-up, and worried that some pinned underneath didn’t make it.

“Thank God I was on top, so I could be evacuated quickly,” said Sausan.

According to Franoto Wibowo, a spokesman for rail operator KAI, a taxi appears to have clipped the commuter train on a level crossing, causing it to come to a standstill on the tracks, where it was hit.

At the station, chaotic scenes unfolded in the aftermath of the crash, with rescue workers shouting for oxygen tanks as ambulances stood by in a snaking queue, lights flashing.

An AFP reporter at the scene witnessed people being carried out of the wreckage on gurneys and loaded into waiting ambulances as hundreds of bystanders looked on, some seemingly in shock.

As rescuers worked to free many more trapped in the crushed train carriages, Deputy House Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad said the toll could rise.

“Judging from the evacuation process that is still underway, it is possible that the number of victims may continue to rise,” he told reporters at the scene.

Franoto told Kompas TV the military, fire brigade, the national search and rescue agency, and the Red Cross were aiding in the evacuation effort.

Passengers trapped

Jakarta police chief Asep Edi Suheri said the long-distance train had crashed into the last, women-only, carriage of the commuter train.

All the victims were in the commuter train, and all 240-odd passengers on the other train had been evacuated safely, according to Purba.

The collision caused “significant damage to several train carriages”, the Jakarta search and rescue agency said in a statement.

“The incident caused a number of passengers to suffer injuries, and several victims were reported to be trapped inside the carriages due to the force of the impact,” it added.

The agency said rescuers were “carrying out the evacuation process for the trapped victims using extrication equipment to free them from the wrecked train structures”.

Eva Chairista, 39, told AFP she had rushed to the RSUD hospital after hearing that her sister-in-law, whom she named only as 27-year-old Fira, had been injured in the crash.

She arrived at a frenetic scene of medical triage.

“The doctor told us to be patient; there are many whose condition is worse than my sister-in-law’s,” she said.

The last major train crash in the Southeast Asian country killed four crew members and injured about two dozen people elsewhere in West Java province in January 2024.

Transport accidents are not uncommon in Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation where buses, trains and even planes are often old and poorly maintained.

Sixteen people were killed when a commuter train crashed into a minibus on a level crossing in Jakarta in 2015.

• Court orders detention as federal case continues.
• Suspect calls himself “Friendly Federal Assassin”.
• Secret Service agent struck but vest stops shot.

The man accused of shooting a US Secret Service agent as he tried to breach security at a Washington dinner attended by President Donald Trump is facing federal charges of attempting to assassinate the president, a judge said in court on Monday.

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, also faces firearms charges in a three-count complaint.

Allen wore a blue prison jumpsuit at his first appearance in Washington federal court, two days after authorities said they foiled an attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, an annual black-tie gathering of journalists and politicians.

“He attempted to assassinate the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine said in court.

Allen has not yet responded to the allegations. Seated at the defense table flanked by US Marshals, Allen said he would answer all questions truthfully and that he had a master’s degree in computer science.

US Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaughordered Allen detained while the case moves forward. Sharbaugh scheduled another hearing over Allen’s continued detention for Thursday.

‘Friendly Federal Assassin’

Allen left a manifesto with family members referring to himself as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and discussing plans to target senior Trump administration officials, who were present in the hotel ballroom. Blanche said his targets likely included Trump himself.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday described the Saturday night attack as the third major assassination attempt against Trump, after two attempts on his life in 2024. She compared the rhetoric in the manifesto to criticism of Trump by his political opponents.

“Much of the manifesto of the would-be assassin is indistinguishable from the words that we hear daily from so many,” Leavitt said. “The entire Democrat Party has made their pitch to voters across the country that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy, that he is a fascist.”

Prominent elected Democrats have condemned the shooting.

Allen booked a room at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the dinner took place, and traveled from California to Washington by train, officials said.

The shooting on Saturday rattled the press dinner, a prominent event on Washington’s social calendar, sending attendees scrambling under tables and prompting law enforcement to whisk senior officials out of the room. Trump, who was set to deliver remarks later in the evening, was rushed off the stage by security personnel after shots were fired.

Secret service agent struck

The suspect allegedly fired a shotgun at a Secret Service agent at a checkpoint inside the hotel before being tackled and arrested, according to authorities. Video footage Trump posted online showed the suspect sprinting through a hallway outside the ballroom.

US officials have said the suspect was subdued just inside a security perimeter and have touted his takedown as a law enforcement success. But the incident has revived concerns about the safety of Trump, who survived two assassination attempts during his 2024 presidential campaign, and other U.S. officials.

The Secret Service agent was struck but a tactical vest stopped the shot, and the agent was released from a hospital hours later.

Allen, who authorities said was armed with a handgun and multiple knives, in addition to the shotgun, was also taken to a local hospital to be evaluated following the shooting.