A POWERFUL suicide truck bomb devastated a hospital in southern Afghanistan today, killing as many as 20 people and wounding more than 90 others, an official said, while a deadly drone strike in the east was blamed on US forces.

The Taliban, who claimed responsibility for the bombing, have carried out near-daily attacks since peace talks with the US collapsed earlier this month.

The latest massive explosion destroyed part of the hospital in Qalat, the capital of southern Zabul province, and left a fleet of ambulances broken and battered.

Residents, many of whom had come to see sick family members, used shawls and blankets to carry casualties inside the destroyed building, while authorities scrambled to take the worst of the wounded to hospitals in nearby Kandahar.

Hours earlier, a drone attack in Nangarhar province killed and wounded as many as 30 people, most of them civilians.

The violence has further rattled the country as it prepares for national elections later this month.

THE electorate in Israel is facing the prospect of a third vote after an unprecedented repeat election left the country’s two main political parties deadlocked, with neither prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his rivals holding a clear path to a coalition government.

Weeks of negotiations to form a coalition government lay ahead, but conditions set by the parties could hobble the task within the allotted time.

With nearly all votes counted today, the centrist Blue and White party had 33 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, and Netanyahu’s conservative Likud had 31. Neither party can form a government without the support of the election’s apparent kingmaker, Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beitenu party. His insistence on a secular government would force out Netanyahu’s traditional allies, the country’s two ultra-Orthodox parties and another nationalist-religious party.

CANADIAN leader Justin Trudeau’s campaign is trying to contain a growing scandal over the publication of a yearbook photo showing him in “brownface” make-up at a 2001 costume party.

Time magazine published the photo, saying it was taken from the yearbook from West Point Grey Academy, a private school in British Columbia where Mr Trudeau worked as a teacher before entering politics.

It depicts the then 29-year-old wearing a turban and robe, with dark make-up on his hands, face and neck.

Trudeau, who launched his re-election campaign a week ago, apologised and begged Canadians to forgive him, adding that he should have known better.