Afghan Attack Worst Since Taliban's Fall
Pastor Dale Morgan
Sep 8, 2:36 PM EDT
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Afghan Attack Worst Since Taliban's Fall*
By PAUL GARWOOD
Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of U.S.
military vehicles Friday in downtown Kabul, killing at least 16 people,
including two American soldiers, and wounding 29 others. It was the
Afghan capital's deadliest suicide attack since the Taliban's 2001 ouster.
The blast near the U.S. Embassy came as NATO chiefs appealed for member
nations to send reinforcements to combat resurgent Taliban militants
fanning the deadliest violence in five years. A top British general said
the fighting in volatile southern Afghanistan was now more ferocious
than in Iraq.
The bomb blew pieces of an American Humvee and U.S. uniforms into trees,
which were set ablaze by the explosion. The blast shattered windows
throughout downtown, and a cloud of brown smoke climbed hundreds of feet
into the sky.
The bombing came three days ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Sept.
11 attacks and as Afghans remembered Ahmad Shah Massood, the fabled
Northern Alliance commander who fought Soviet forces and the Taliban and
was assassinated by suspected al-Qaida operatives posing as journalists
on Sept. 9, 2001.
The Kabul blast went off about 50 yards from the landmark Massood
Square, which leads to the main gate of the heavily fortified U.S.
Embassy compound. It dug a 6-foot-wide crater and left body parts,
Muslim prayer caps, floppy khaki-colored military hats and shoes
scattered on the ground.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, saying, "Today's heinous
act of terrorism is against the values of Islam and humanity."
A witness, Najibullah Faizi, said he saw a blue Toyota Corolla driven by
a young, heavyset man speed past another car on the inside lane before
ramming one of two U.S. Humvees in a convoy.
"I fell to the ground after the blast. American soldiers started
shooting at another car nearby. There was smoke and flames everywhere,"
Faizi, 25, told reporters.
Sixteen people were killed and 29 were wounded, said Ali Shah Paktiawal,
criminal director of the Kabul police. Two American soldiers in the
vehicle were among those killed and two were among the wounded, said
U.S. military spokeswoman Lt. Tamara Lawrence. The attacker also died.
Among the victims was an elderly woman who had been sitting with her
granddaughter in a small yard outside a Soviet-era apartment building.
"My mother just went to the park for some fresh air with my daughter
when the explosion happened," said the woman's son, Farid Wahidi, 40.
"Shrapnel hit her in the chest and killed her."
An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of two coalition soldiers
lying yards from the Humvee. U.S. troops stood guard around the bodies,
one of which was slumped in the gutter, the other covered by a plastic
sheet.
Dozens of U.S. and British soldiers cordoned off the scene as
investigators sifted through the wreckage of the charred military vehicle.
Soldiers retrieved body parts, apparently from the suicide bomber, and
placed them into plastic bags for further investigation.
Afghanistan is facing its deadliest spate of violence since U.S.-led
forces toppled the hard-line Taliban regime for hosting Osama bin Laden.
Hundreds on both sides have been killed each month this year.
A roadside bomb hit an Italian military convoy in western Farah province
Friday, wounding four troops, one seriously, NATO and the Italian
Defense Ministry said.
Some 20,000 NATO soldiers and a similar number of U.S. forces are in
Afghanistan trying to crush an emboldened Taliban insurgency. The
heaviest fighting takes place across vast desert plains in southern
Helmand and Kandahar provinces, also center of the country's massive
opium trade.
"The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of
the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis," Brig. Ed
Butler, the commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, told British ITV
news.
He echoed NATO commander Gen. James L. Jones' call Thursday for more
troops. Jones, who said the next few weeks would be decisive in the
fight against militants, was expected to press officials from the 26
NATO member states for more soldiers and air support at talks being held
in Poland on Friday and Saturday.
Butler said more soldiers would allow operations to be carried out
faster. "It will continue to be tough and we will continue to take more
casualties, but morale is extraordinarily high," he said.
Also Friday, a would-be suicide attacker killed only himself when his
bomb-packed car exploded prematurely in Kandahar, said police official
Rehmat Ali.
The car was parked on the main road to the Kandahar Airfield, where NATO
vehicles, Afghan security forces and government officials regularly
pass. None were in the area at the time of the blast.
Afghan security forces, meanwhile, found four bombs near a northern
Kabul high school, defusing two and safely detonating the others, said
police official Mohammed Arif.
About 70 Taliban fighters fired rockets at a district government
headquarters in the central province of Wardak early Friday before
police repelled them, said provincial police chief Mahboobullah Amiri.
Eight Taliban were killed and four wounded according to witnesses, Amiri
said, but police had retrieved no bodies. One policeman was lightly
wounded, and eight militants were arrested.
NATO forces launched airstrikes and artillery and mortar barrages on
Taliban positions in Kandahar's Panjwayi district overnight, inflicting
an unspecified number of Taliban casualties, said Maj. Scott Lundy, a
NATO spokesman. No NATO or Afghan forces were hurt.
Lundy said NATO would press on with Operation Medusa, which began
Saturday in Panjwayi, until it had "removed" all the Taliban militants.
NATO says it has killed more than 270 insurgents since the offensive
began and that hundreds more are massed in the district, west of Kandahar.
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Associated Press writers Amir Shah and Matthew Pennington in Kabul and
Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.