KANDAHAR, Oct 13: A suicide car bomb ripped through Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar on Friday, killing nine civilians in the latest in a rash of such attacks.
The US troops who were travelling through the town to a nearby area where International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers killed 20 Taliban insurgents a day earlier in a battle involving artillery and war planes.
“A vehicle-borne suicide bomber killed eight Afghan civilians in an attack on an ISAF convoy travelling in Kandahar City,” an ISAF statement said, adding that two ISAF soldiers and several civilians were also wounded.
The car used for the attack was totally destroyed and lay in pieces at the site, an AFP reporter said. Blood was spattered on the road and sidewalks, while three nearby shops were on fire and 10 were damaged.
“This indiscriminate attack further demonstrates the insurgent’s total disregard for the safety of the local population of Kandahar city,” the statement said.
The convoy was passing through the city to a meeting of village elders in the Panjwayi area, 35 kilometres west of the city, ISAF spokesman Major Quentin Innis said.
The Panjwayi area was the focus last month of Nato’s biggest anti-Taliban operation launched against entrenched insurgents who had massed fighters and equipment for what officials said could have been an assault on Kandahar.
The nearly two-week-long Operation Medusa left hundreds of Taliban dead and forced others out of the area, ISAF said afterwards.
ISAF commander General David Richards described it as the biggest defeat of the Taliban since they were toppled from government five years ago in a US-led invasion that came weeks after the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda, then being sheltered in Afghanistan.
Since then, however, there has been new infiltration into the area.
About 60 insurgents attacked a routine Afghan and ISAF patrol early on Thursday.
The troops returned fire and called in air support. “It was assessed that up to 20 insurgents were killed,” ISAF spokesman Squadron Leader Jason Chalk told AFP late Thursday.
Afghan troops detained two suspected Taliban and handed them to police, he said.
Military officials have said a recent surge in such guerrilla-style attacks could be linked to the militants’ losses on the battlefield, notably in Panjwayi where they suffered their biggest defeat since 2001.
Kandahar province — the birthplace and former stronghold of the fundamentalist Taliban — has seen a fourfold increase in suicide bombings this year over last.
The insurgency, which increasingly bears the hallmarks of insurgent activity in Iraq, has gone through its worst phase this year with an estimated 2,500 people killed, most of them rebels.—AFP
