AFGHANISTAN: Suicide bomb attack near police base in Kandahar, one wounded

A suicide car-bomb went off just after a convoy of NATO troops passed a police base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Wednesday (September 27) , wounding a passer-by, witnesses and officials said. There were no casualties among the NATO troops or Afghan police at the base, they said. The bomber was killed. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said by telephone the bomber was a Taliban member. "I was just here washing my car, when the convoy of Canadian troops passing by this road, I saw a car driving very fast and blew itself at the back of Canadian convoy, there was no causalities for the foreigners and Afghans only one resident was wounded." Said Agha Mohammad, an eyewitness at the scene. The Taliban's intensified campaign against the government and foreign troops supporting it this year has spawned the worst violence since the hardline Islamists were ousted after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Eighteen people, most of them civilians, were killed in a suicide bomb attack in the neighbouring province of Helmand on Tuesday. The violence this year has raised concerns for the country, a central battlefield in the "war on terrorism". Optimism generated by successful elections in 2004 and 2005 has largely evaporated. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in the United States and is due to hold talks with President George W. Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf later on Wednesday. Karzai and Musharraf, major U.S. allies in the war on terrorism, have been trading barbs over Afghan complaints that the Taliban are able to operate and get support from sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border. jrc/

ITN Source | September 27, 2006

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