Suicide Bomber Attacks Volleyball Game
WHITFIELD: In Afghanistan, a suicide bomber has attacked a crowd at a volleyball match. At least 45 people were dead, 60 others wounded. Nick Paton Walsh joins us live from Turkey. So Nick, what do you know about what took place in Afghanistan?</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This was quite a big volleyball match, kind of a district level competition really, a lot of spectators. The suicide bomber walking into the midst of them, clearly intent on causing as many casualties as possible. Fredricka, 100 lives changed by this and it just serves as part of the backdrop really of daily violence that many Afghans have to deal with now for decades. This taking place where an insurgent group called the Haqqani Network are pretty strong. This is not the kind of thing they normally do. But in the past week or so, it comes as Afghanistan has a new president who wants to dismiss the U.S. in fact improve relations today. The lower House of Parliaments ratifying a key document known as the BSA, the Bilateral Security Agreement. Now that basically means the U.S. could continue to have a combat presence in Afghanistan for the years ahead. They were talking about reducing their presence just Marines protecting the embassy in a matter of years, now that could be aircraft. That could be Special Forces. They want to retain in Afghanistan, perhaps worried about a Taliban resurgence that's still happening. Worried perhaps about al Qaeda affiliates stepping back in and has a power vacuum, but perhaps also to their mind on Iraq where the Iraqi government asked U.S. forces to leave so fast many say Barack Obama doesn't want to see a repeat of that in the Afghanistan, Pakistan region -- Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much. All right, coming up, why the grand jury considering the Ferguson case is unique. First, the war on Syria has left so many children as refugees. Just this weekend, Vice President Joe Biden announced $135 million in new aid for Syrian refugees. CNN's Arwa Damon went to see how some of the war's youngest victims are being helped.</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With new back packs almost as big as they are, the children file into the orphanage after school. Their faces and behavior betray few of the horrors they have witnessed. Their fathers are dead, lost to illness or war in Syria. Their mothers decided to send them here.</s>UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: What's your name?</s>DAMON (on camera): My name is Arwa. What's your name?</s>UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: My name is (inaudible).</s>DAMON (voice-over): She's 8. Her father killed by a bullet on his way to work. Daddy used to take me everywhere with him she tells us. The orphanage opened in September offering a safe place. Toys replace those they left behind as they fled Syria. Clean water to wash with and regular hot healthy meals. The orphanage was established by the foundation named after another little girl who was paralyzed by shrapnel.</s>YAKZAN SHISHAKLY, CO-FOUNDER, MARAM FOUNDATION: Children away from all that's happening inside Syria and to give them the right to have a normal life away from the war.</s>DAMON: And the impact is already being seen. Mayada Abdi, head of the orphanage says, head of the orphanage says Maram was very solitary, often lost in the memories of her father. I would see him in my dreams, Maram remembers. I would see him giving someone something. She seems less haunted by his death, dreaming instead of going home to Syria and teaching. Arwa Damon, CNN, Turkey.