A suicide car bomber wounded eight civilians in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, as officials said 13 Taliban died in a US air strike and four more were killed by a mine they were planting. The suicide attacker blew up his vehicle near a NATO convoy in the main southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the 1996-2001 Taliban regime whose remnants are now behind a bloody insurgency. Police said eight civilians were wounded and the bomber died. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul confirmed an “explosion” and said its troops did not suffer any casualties.
No one claimed responsibility for the blast, but the Taliban have vowed to launch a wave of suicide attacks this year. Separately on Tuesday, US-led coalition and Afghan troops called in warplanes after Taliban rebels attacked them with mortars and rockets in the troubled Sangin district of southern Helmand province, the coalition said. “Coalition aircraft arrived and dropped munitions which resulted in the destruction of one enemy compound, a bunker and a vehicle,” it said in a statement.
“There were an estimated 13 Taliban fighters killed during the engagement,” it said, adding there were no civilian casualties. The airstrike came a day after coalition jets killed four Taliban fighters in Sangin district. About 1,000 Afghan security forces and NATO-led troops took Sangin out of Taliban control at the weekend without facing any major resistance, according to authorities.
Meanwhile, four Taliban fighters were killed when a landmine meant to target foreign and Afghan troops exploded as they planted it in the southern province of Ghazni, a district official said.
“A group of Taliban were laying a mine on a road. The mine went off and killed four of them,” chief of Ander district Abdul Rahim said. Two other rebels were injured in the blast, he said.