October 04, 2007	Thursday	Ramazan 21, 1428

KABUL: Violence in Afghanistan has increased 20 per cent since last year, and suicide bombings are on a record pace, according to a new UN report.

The report found that while 76 per cent of all suicide bombings in the country have targeted international and Afghan security forces, 143 civilians were killed by those bombs through August. Afghanistan has averaged 550 violent incidents per month this year, up from 425 last year, it said.“Suicide attacks have been accompanied by attacks against students and schools, assassinations of officials, elders and mullahs, and the targeting of police in a deliberate and calculated effort to impede the establishment of legitimate government institutions,” the report said.

The report, which was released last week, did not give any other violence-related numbers.

An AP count of insurgency-related deaths, meanwhile, reached 5,086 — the most deaths in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban. The AP counted some 4,000 deaths in 2006, based on reports from Western and Afghan officials.

A suicide attack on Tuesday on a police bus in western Kabul killed 13 officers and civilians, including a woman and her two children who boarded the vehicle seconds before the explosion, the health minister said.

It was the second bomb to rip the roof off a bus in the Afghan capital in four days, as insurgents turned up attacks against Afghanistan’s security forces during a year of record violence.

The AP tally counts more than 3,500 militants killed this year, but also more than 650 civilians who died either by militant violence or US or Nato attacks. Almost 180 international soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year, including 85 Americans, a record pace. Last year about 90 US soldiers died in Afghanistan.The count only includes militants killed by military action by the US-led coalition, which is comprised of Special Forces soldiers. The Nato contingent here, which contains conventional US troops, does not release death estimates from its battles.

Insurgents have also launched a record number of suicide attacks — more than 100 — and two bus bombings in Kabul since Saturday killed 43 people between them.

Four children were among the 13 killed on a bus on Tuesday by a man wearing a pakul — an Afghan hat commonly worn in the country’s north — and a shawl around the upper half of his body called a chador, said witness Amin Gul, who owns a metalworking shop next to the blast site.

“When the bus came, an old man got on, then a woman with two children, then the guy wearing the chador entered, and then a big boom,” said Gul.

The seats in the front of the bus were covered in blood and small body parts, and workers washed blood from nearby trees after the attack. Ten people were wounded in the bombing, Health Minister Mohammad Amin Fatemi said.

Ahmad Saqi, a 20-year-old mechanic, said he helped put seven people in vehicles to take them to the hospital, and that several of the wounded had no legs.

“One woman was holding a baby in her arms, and they were both killed,” Saqi said.

The blast killed eight police officers, the mother, her two children and two other unaccompanied children who had been heading to a special school for handicapped students, Fatemi said. The children ranged in age from 2 to 8 years.

“The woman’s husband is working at the Health Ministry. How do we tell the father his wife and two kids are dead?” said Fatemi. “This attack goes against all of Islam. There is no reason to blow up Muslims, especially during the holy month of Ramazan. My message to these people: Please stop killing Muslims.”

Tuesday’s explosion was the third attack in four months against police or army buses in Kabul.

On Saturday a suicide bomber wearing an army uniform blew himself up in an army bus, killing 30 people. In June a bomb ripped through a bus carrying police instructors in Kabul, killing 35 people, the deadliest insurgent attack since the 2001 US-led invasion.

A US-led coalition soldier was killed by gunfire on Tuesday morning while conducting combat operations in the northeastern province of Kunar. Three other soldiers were wounded, the coalition said in a statement. The nationalities of the soldiers weren’t provided, but most soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are American.

Militants in Kunar attacked a border security post, killing three police, said Zargun Shah Khaliqyar, the provincial governor’s spokesman. It was not clear if the two incidents in Kunar were related.

Canadian troops in Kandahar shot and killed a 35-year-old man and wounded a child in what Nato’s International Security Assistance Force called an “accidental discharge” by a weapons system.

The Afghan Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said Afghan and coalition soldiers battled insurgents in Uruzgan province on Sunday, killing 26 of the militants. There was no way to independently verify the claim.—AP