…Suicide bomber hits Shi’ite area of Afghanistan, killing seven***

In two separate accidents, 11 people died when a minibus became trapped in a forest fire in rural Guinea-Bissau, while another 10 persons died in Peru when a bus veered off the road, killing 10 in the process, police and doctors have said.

The Guinea-Bissau accident happened on Thursday night, after the overcrowded vehicle left the village of Konkoli, near the capital Bissau, on an 80-kilometer (50-mile) trip to a market in Bissora.

“The driver tried to go down a track in a forest which was on fire. There was no visibility because of the smoke and fire,” a police official said. “The passengers were trapped and died of suffocation.”

Police recovered nine bodies, and two people who were injured later died, the official said. Nine others are being treated for injuries.

The toll was confirmed by sources at the local hospital.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known. At this time of the year, farmers in Guinea-Bissau often set fire to harvest stubble to eliminate weeds, and the blaze can spread from fields to the bush.

Meanwhile, in Peru, a bus veered off course and plunged 100 meters down a gorge in Peru’s southeastern Andean region of Ayacucho Wednesday, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring more than 20, police said.

The bus, which had more than 50 people on board, tumbled off the road in the early hours of the morning on the Interoceanic Highway, which connects Peru with Brazil.

“We have so far recorded 10 deaths after a bus fell into a 100 meter (325 feet) gorge,” said Jose Ramirez, a police official in Puquio, the closest town to where the accident took place.

The bus was traveling from the capital Lima to Querobamba, Sucre province, which is located over 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) above sea level.

Over 20 injured passengers were taken to hospital in Puquio and Huanta, another nearby town.

There were two other deadly bus crashes in Peru in January and February, which killed 97 people in total.

In the meantime, officials said a suicide bomber blew himself up in, Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday, killing seven people in an attack apparently intended to hit crowds gathered to commemorate a political leader from the mainly Shi’ite Hazara minority.

Nasrat Rahimi, a deputy interior ministry spokesman, said one policeman and six civilians were killed and seven civilians wounded when the bomber was stopped at a security checkpoint.

He said the bomber appeared to have intended to attack crowds gathered for the anniversary celebrations of the death of Abdul Ali Mazari, a Hazara political leader killed by the Taliban in 1995.

A string of attacks on Shi’ite mosques and Hazara gatherings has been claimed by an affiliate of Islamic State, although many Afghan and Western security officials say they doubt the group works alone.

In December, dozens of people were killed in a suicide attack on a Shi’ite cultural center claimed by Islamic State and two months earlier two separate mosque attacks killed at least 72 people.

The attack came less than two weeks after President Ashraf Ghani called on the Taliban to join peace talks to end more than 16 years of the latest phase of Afghan war.

Punch with additional report from Nation