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| Afghanistan |
| Suicide bomber kills 4 civilians in Afghan south |
| 2008-05-19 |
| A suspected Taliban suicide bomber killed four civilians in an attack targeting a district police chief in a southern Afghan former insurgent stronghold on Sunday, a police official said. Taliban insurgents carried out more than 140 suicide bombings in 2007 and have vowed to step up such attacks this year. Some 95 percent of those killed by the Taliban are civilians, a United Nations special rapporteur said this week. The latest attack came in the town of Musa Qala in Helmand province and targeted the district police chief. Four civilians were killed by the blast and eight more people, three civilians and five police, were wounded, the provincial police chief said. The suicide bomb came a day after Taliban insurgents fired at a NATO helicopter carrying the provincial governor near Musa Qala forcing it to make an emergency landing. Musa Qala took on a symbolic importance after Taliban fighters forced British troops out of the dusty opium-trading centre in late 2006. The Taliban then seized it in February last year making it the only town of any size held by the rebels. Afghan, British and U.S. forces took back Musa Qala in a large offensive in December, but Taliban insurgents still hold many of the villages around the town which sits on a river running through barren desert. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed a soldier from U.S.-led coalition forces and an Afghan civilian in the southern province of Zabul on Sunday, the U.S. military said. Thousands of people have been killed in Afghanistan in the last two years as the Taliban step up their campaign to topple the pro-Western Afghan government and force the withdrawal of more than 50,000 foreign troops from the country. |
| Posted by:Fred |