Kabul - Twenty-one civilians and four police officers were
killed Thursday in a car bombing in the central Afghan province of
Logar, while two NATO soldiers and 15 militants were killed in the
southern region, officials said.
'Twenty-one local civilians, including school students, and four
of our police officers were killed in the blast,' said General
Mustafa Andarabi, the provincial police chief.
The explosives were placed in a truck that had apparently been
overturned purposely on a road in the village of Sheikhak in Mohammad
Agha district.
'As the local people and police were trying to remove the vehicle
from the road, the explosives which were hidden inside were detonated
by a remotely controlled device, causing a massive blast,' Andarabi
said.
The attack, which took place about 30 kilometres south of Kabul,
also injured four civilians, including three children, Andarabi said.
Several shops in the main market of Mohammad Agha district were
destroyed and windows of houses were smashed as far as one kilometre
away, a police official said.
Footage from the scene by Tolo, a private TV channel in Kabul,
showed the explosion left a huge crater in the road, while mangled
and charred parts of vehicles were seen scattered around.
Mohammad Asif Nang, a spokesman for the Afghan Education Ministry,
said that several students from a nearby boys school were killed in
the attack.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, which was the
deadliest single incident carried out by anti-government elements
since the beginning of this year, and ordered the security forces to
bring to justice the perpetrators of the 'unforgivable crime.'
'No Muslim commits such a barbaric and cowardly act, targeting
civilians against all Islamic and human values,' Karzai said in a
statement issued by his office.
No group immediately took responsibility for the bombing.
Taliban militants, who were driven from power in a US-led invasion
in late 2001, have waged a bloody insurgency against the
Western-backed Afghan government and its international military
allies. They rely heavily on use of suicide and roadside attacks as
part of their campaign.
In another incident, two NATO-led International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb blast
in the southern region on Wednesday, the alliance said in a statement
on Thursday.
The statement did not reveal the nationalities of the soldiers,
nor did it say where exactly in the southern region the incident took
place. Most of the forces stationed in the region are from the US,
Canada, Britain and the Netherlands.
In another incident in the same region, 15 Taliban militants were
killed and several others wounded after they attacked government
buildings in Suri district of Zabul province early Thursday, Abdul
Rahman Sarjang, the provincial police chief said.
There were no casualties among the joint Afghan and NATO forces,
who took part in the gun-battle, Sarjang said, adding that the forces
detained one militant during the fighting.
The southern provinces are the most volatile region in the
country. Some 4,000 newly-deployed US Marines and more than 600
Afghan soldiers and police are taking part in an operation, dubbed
Khanjar or Strike of the Sword, in Helmand province to drive the
militants from several districts before August 20 presidential
elections.
The Afghan Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that the combined
forces have so far killed 27 insurgents since the start of operation
on July 2, and have taken control of one district from the Taliban
militants, who still hold at least three more districts.
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