Two Afghans killed in Taliban attacks, suicide blast wounds seven
Two people were shot dead and a suicide bomber targeting foreign troops wounded seven civilians in Afghanistan, officials said, in the latest attacks indicating that the Taliban has intensified its insurgency.
The suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden Toyota Corolla vehicle near two armoured vehicles in a convoy of Romanian and Canadian soldiers in the troubled southern city of Kandahar, the coalition said Thursday.
A coalition soldier and four bystanders were wounded in the ensuing blast, a coalition spokesman said.
The Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team run by foreign troops said that seven bystanders including one woman and two children were injured and taken to hospital.
"This indiscriminate attack occurred on a busy street where the attacker did not make any effort to limit civilian casualties," the team said in a statement.
The attacker had not been able to fully strike the convoy as his explosives-filled car detonated prematurely when it was clipped by an overtaking taxi, district police chief Colonel Shir Shah told AFP.
The blast struck in the centre of Kandahar near the scene of another suicide attack that killed a senior Canadian diplomat in January.
A purported spokesman for Taliban militants, Yousuf Ahmadi, said the movement had carried out the attack.
"We claim responsibility for the suicide car bomb," Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The attacker "had filled his own car with explosives and today in the morning he rammed his vehicle amid a Canadian convoy."
Kandahar has seen several suicide blasts blamed on remnants of the Taliban government, who have been waging a deadly insurgency since they were removed from power in late 2001 in a US-led attack.
Eleven Canadian soldiers have died since the force arrived in 2001 to join the hunt for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.
The first Canadian solder to die in action this year was killed in southern Helmand province Wednesday when the Taliban attacked a coalition base. A US soldier was also killed along with 32 Taliban, the coalition said.
The assault was the biggest on a coalition base in months and came about two weeks after the Taliban pledged a new spring offensive.
In another attack in Helmand blamed on the Taliban, a police director and his brother were shot dead as they were travelling to work Thursday in the province's Musa Qala district, said deputy provincial governor Amir Akhund.
In a separate incident a remote-controlled bomb struck a police truck in the eastern city of Khost near the Pakistan border, officials said.
"Six wounded police were admitted to our hospital. One of them was critically wounded in the head," said a doctor at the local hospital, Abdul Majeed Tanai.
Soldiers in Khost meanwhile arrested two suspected members of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda movements hidden under the all-covering burqas that the 1996-2001 Taliban regime forced women to wear, an army colonel said.
Initial investigations showed they had come from neighbouring Pakistan to target Afghan troops and foreign soldiers, Colonel Murtaza Khan told AFP.
The Taliban were toppled after they failed to surrender Osama bin Laden following the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Most of the movement's leadership is believed to have fled to Pakistan, from where Afghan officials say they are directing a deadly insurgency with help from Al-Qaeda.
There are about 30,000 troops from more than 30 foreign countries in Afghanistan to help the government fight insurgents so it can rebuild after nearly three decades of war.
AFP
