A bomb attached to a bicycle killed at least 13 people, most of them children, on a road regularly used by U.S. troops in this southern city Tuesday, underlining the violence still plaguing Afghanistan two years after the fall of the Taliban.
| And their concern for the populace... |
More than 50 people were wounded in the blast, which officials said may have been targeting U.S. troops or the provincial governor, whose motorcade was about to pass that way. An Associated Press reporter saw wrecked bicycles, blood and shattered glass from a passing truck strewn across the street in the east of the city, which was quickly sealed off by dozens of Afghan and U.S. soldiers.
| I wonder if a cell phone might have rung prematurely? |
Eleven of the dead were children, aged 7-15, apparently among a crowd that gathered after another bomb went off at the same site a few minutes earlier. "I was playing football when I heard the first bomb, and a lot us rushed to see what happened. Then the second one went off," said Saami Khan, 15, who had been struck by shrapnel in the face and chest and was recuperating in a Kandahar hospital. Deputy Police Chief Salim Khan suggested the twin blasts may have been intended for soldiers from an Afghan military base just 100 yards away. "They were chasing a suspect when they second explosion occurred," he said.
| I sure as hell hope they caught him... |
But Deputy Interior Minister Hilalludin Hillal said the U.S. troops who regularly travel the road or Kandahar Governor Yusuf Pashtun were more likely targets of the attackers. "They don’t care so much about Afghan troops," he said.
| They keep trying for us infidels... |
A soldier, Amanullah Popolzai, said authorities arrested a man seen running from the scene shortly before the explosion. The man, who appeared to be an Afghan, was caught trying to hide in a nearby home. "This was the work of the Taliban. The man looked like he was a Talib fighter," Popolzai said.
| What's he look like now? Pizza, I hope... |
In the capital, Kabul, President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as "barbarism."
| Intentionally blowing up kiddies... Yeah. You'd probably want to take that one as "barbarism." Unless you went with "savagery." I lean more toward the latter, myself... |
"These enemies of Afghanistan, who hide in the darkness to launch attacks on innocent civilians, must be eliminated, and they will be eliminated," said his spokesman, Jawid Luddin.
| Does that mean you're going to start killing them, instead of giving them a good talking-to and then setting them free with 20 dollars and a gun? |
Khan said the truck driver and a male passer-by were also killed by the bomb, which he said was attached to one of the bicycles. Khan put the number of wounded at 23, although Luddin put that total at more than 50. "Most of them were children who had just come out of school," Luddin told the AP. "It’s an act of barbarism."
| That's what Karzai said... |
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