Taliban bombs in Afghanistan kill 20, including Italian
Pastor Dale Morgan
Tuesday September 26, 7:20 PM
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Taliban bombs in Afghanistan kill 20, including Italian*
A suicide blast has ripped through a crowded southern Afghan town,
killing 18 people, while a powerful bomb in Kabul killed an Italian
soldier and a child in a wave of Taliban attacks.
The suicide attacker blew himself up at a security post near a mosque in
Lashkar Gah, capital of troubled Helmand province, where hundreds of
people had gathered to decide who would go on the hajj pilgrimage to
Mecca later this year.
The explosion was also near the house of the provincial governor. The
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which has troops in
the area, said guards at the house may have been the target but that
none were hurt.
"It was a suicide attack. Eighteen people were killed and 18 wounded,"
provincial police chief General Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhail told AFP.
"Three of the dead were policemen."
Three Afghan soldiers were also killed, provincial government spokesman
Mohayedin Khan said.
"The Afghan army soldiers had identified this guy and as they tried to
arrest him, he exploded himself near the police checkpost," Khan said.
The dead included people who had crowded around the checkpoint to enter
the mosque, witnesses said.
A man who often calls the media and claims to speak for the Taliban said
the bomber belonged to the insurgent group, which was toppled from
government in late 2001.
Another purported Taliban spokesman said the movement was also
responsible for a remote-controlled bomb in the capital early Tuesday.
The explosives were hidden in a ditch that passed under the road about
10 kilometres (six miles) south of the city centre, an AFP correspondent
at the scene said.
The blast was so powerful that it ripped up the tarmac and tossed an
ISAF armoured vehicle for metres (yards), flipping it upside down.
An Italian soldier was killed and five were wounded, the Italian
ambassador to Kabul, Ettore Francesco Sequi, told AFP.
An Afghan child was also killed, ISAF said in statement. Police said
five other Afghans were hurt.
Italy has nearly 2,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of the 37-nation
ISAF, which is trying to establish security in the face of the virulent
Taliban insurgency. Two were killed in a bomb in Kabul in May.
There has been a spike in suicide and roadside attacks in Afghanistan
this year carried out by the extremist Taliban militia.
A convoy of US-led coalition troops narrowly escaped a suicide blast
near the eastern town of Khost Tuesday when the would-be bomber exploded
before reaching his target, the US-led coalition said.
And a small bomb exploded in an office at Khost University, wounding two
teachers and a student, police said.
One of the teachers was a former Taliban official who had joined a
government reconciliation programme, a student said.
In neighbouring Paktika province, authorities reported that six
suspected rebels were killed Monday when they were escorting a suicide
bomber whose explosives detonated early.
Five were wallking with the sixth as he left a village on a mission to
carry out an attack, provincial governor Mohammad Akram Ikhpolwak told
AFP, citing intelligence reports.
ISAF meanwhile reported late Monday that coalition air strikes killed 20
insurgents in southern Uruzgan province. Two coalition and seven Afghan
soldiers were lightly wounded in the engagement Sunday, it said.
There are almost 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan with the 37-nation
ISAF or the coalition.
They are trying to help government forces quell the Taliban rebellion,
extend government authority and facilitate reconstruction of the
war-damaged country.
But the level of resistance has been greater than expected, with calls
for more support for foreign troops, who are involved in almost daily
clashes while also being targeted by guerrilla-style suicide and
roadside bombings.