Kabul - Two suicide attackers blew themselves up at the
police headquarters in Kandahar city on Sunday, killing and wounding
more than 30, while two dozen Taliban were killed in airstrikes and
clashes elsewhere in the country, officials have said.
The bombers detonated their explosives inside the police
headquarters on Sunday afternoon, provincial police chief Matiullah
Khan said. Kandahar city is the capital of the province of the same
name.
While Khan said two policemen were killed and 24 policemen and
five civilians were wounded, Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of provincial
council in Kandahar and younger of brother of Afghan President Hamid
Karzai, gave different figures for death toll.
'According to information I received, six policemen and two
civilians were killed in the attack and more than 20 others were
wounded,' Karzai said.
Earlier, a police officer at the scene of the attack told Deutsche
Presse-Agentur dpa that six police officers were killed and 15 others
wounded.
The police source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the
bombers targeted border police commander Abdul Razaq Khan as he was
entering the provincial police headquarters.
Razaq was also wounded in the attack, the source said.
Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousif Ahmadi, claimed that two
of their fighters, Abdul Matin and Qari Mohammad Wali, both residents
of the southern region, carried out the attacks.
Ahmadi, who was speaking by phone from an undisclosed location,
told dpa that dozens of policemen were killed and wounded in the
blasts.
In another suicide bombing on Sunday, a bomber targeted an Italian
NATO military convoy in Herat Province in western Afghanistan,
killing himself but causing no other casualties, Abdul Rauf Ahmadi, a
spokesman for the police in the western region said.
Meanwhile, Afghan and coalition forces killed at least two dozen
Taliban in clashes and airstrikes in eastern and southern regions,
officials claimed Sunday.
Twelve Taliban militants were killed in a US-led coalition
airstrike in Sabari district of south-eastern province of Khost on
Saturday, Arsala Jamal, provincial governor said.
He said the combined forces targeted a compound where they had
intelligence information that militants had gathered.
The US military also confirmed the air raid in a statement issued
on Sunday, saying the operation targeted a militant wanted for
conducting and coordinating direct and suicide attacks in Sabari
District.
More than 10 insurgents were killed during the operation, and
seven others were detained, the statement said.
The attack took place in the same region where two NATO soldiers
were killed in an insurgent attack on Saturday, the alliance said in
a statement on late Saturday night.
The statement did not reveal the nationalities of the dead
soldiers. Most of the troops deployed to the eastern region are from
the US.
At least 12 other militants were killed in two separate clashes in
volatile southern Helmand province on Saturday, Mohammad Hussain
Andewal, provincial police chief said.
He said two rebels were killed in Nawa district of the province,
and more than 10 others were killed during a five-hour firefight in
Nad Ali district.
The claimed death tolls could not be verified independently due to
the remoteness of the area.
Helmand and other southern provinces of Kandahar, Zabul and
Uruzgan have borne the brunt of the Taliban-led insurgency since the
radical Islamist regime was ousted by the US invasion in 2001.
The violence so far this year has killed more than 3,800 people,
mostly insurgents.
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