KABUL - Twin suicide attacks resulted in the deaths of two Indian road construction workers and their driver on Saturday, while Afghan and NATO forces killed 24 militants in an operation in southern Afghanistan, officials said. The attacks against the workers took place in Khasrod district Saturday morning, when two men with explosives strapped to their bodies jumped in front of a road construction convoy, provincial Governor Ghulom Dastagir Azaad said.One Indian engineer and his Afghan driver were killed at the scene, Azaad said. A diplomat from the Indian embassy in Kabul confirmed that a second Indian worker succumbed to his injuries en route to hospital.
Five other Indian workers and a police escort were wounded in the attacks, the officials said, while Azaad said that a third attacker, who was also wounded in the blasts, was arrested by Afghan police.
Azaad said that police arrested three people in connection with the attack and that the wounded Indian nationals were transported to Iran for further treatment. “The three arrested men told police interrogators that the two bombers were Punjabis (Pakistanis) and they were brought by one of the arrested men from the Pakistani border on Friday to the area.”
“The two bombers, who spoke neither Dari nor Pashtu (the Afghan national languages) except for Punjabi, stayed in the arrested men’s house on Friday night,” he said.
Five personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which provides security to India-assisted projects in Afghanistan, had been injured and arrangements were being made to airlift them to Kabul, Sharma added.