Afghan Suicide Attack Targets Police in Kandahar
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at a police parking lot in central Kandahar on Sunday, killing at least seven people, including five police officers and a child, in the fourth attempted or successful suicide bombing there in less than a month.
The blast wounded at least 19 people, including 6 police officers, 3 children and 2 women, who were taken to Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar, said Mohammed Daoud Farhad, a doctor there.
The attack came just a day after the United Nations reported that more civilians died in 2011 than in any previous year of the war, mainly because of an increase in killings by insurgents, including more frequent and precise suicide bombings.
The Taliban have pledged repeatedly not to harm civilians, but their words have not been reflected in their tactics.
The Kandahar bombing occurred near a bazaar, on a main road used by civilians that runs beside a large sewage canal. The bodies of three of the police officers were thrown into the canal by the explosion and several police vehicles were overturned. Windows shattered in more than a hundred shops left the streets thick with broken glass.
Kandahar had been relatively quiet for months, but there have been a series of suicide bombings since Jan. 11, when there was a foiled attack on the police headquarters. The influential governor of Panjway District was assassinated by a suicide bomber on Jan. 12, and on Jan. 19 a suicide bomber killed seven people, including two children, near the gates of one of the largest NATO bases in the country.
An official for the Afghan intelligence department in Kandahar said that informers and captured insurgents have told investigators recently that the city is in insurgents' cross hairs. Taliban commanders have been ferrying would-be suicide bombers to the city and organizing attacks, the intelligence official said.
Local shopkeepers said they had warned the police about parking their cars in the area, which is frequented daily by crowds of civilians. The police are a regular target in Kandahar and have been attacked dozens of times in the last two years.
First Published February 6, 2012 12:01 am
