On weekdays, when most kids around the world are at school, 12-year-old Mansour is in the middle of a grueling shift at the coal mines.
Deep inside a tunnel carved into the side of a blackened mountain, the young boy waits under the flickering glow of his headlamp as older boys pry coal out of the earth by pickaxe and hand, while others shovel the piles into sacks strapped onto the backs of donkeys.
From there, it is Mansour's job — from dawn until dusk — to lead the coal-laden donkeys out of a labyrinth of crumbling tunnels down the mountain in this remote part of Baghlan province, 180 miles north of Kabul. Here, the so-called black gold is bagged and loaded onto trucks, mostly bound for neighboring countries.
"My family sent me to work here last year," he says. He's wearing no protective equipment — no mask, no goggles, just a pair of cheap rubber shoes he's sliced open to let his feet breathe, with toes blackened by coal dust peeking out. "What they pay me goes directly to my family."
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has approved the issuance of gun licences to Israelis in...
For over four decades, Republican presidents have banned U.S. funds from going to groups that provide...
Air-defense sirens wailed and explosions shook Kyiv early Saturday as Russia launched one of its heaviest...
New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has received a baby box from the Scottish government after...
