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| Afghanistan |
| Boom boy bombs coppe shoppe in Oruzgan province |
| 2009-02-03 |
| Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Istanbul, Turkey -- In an attack that underscored the vulnerability of Afghanistan's struggling security forces, a suicide bomber dressed in a police uniform slipped into a police compound and detonated a powerful explosive device Monday, killing at least 21 officers, authorities said. The attack in southern Afghanistan also wounded a dozen police officers, according to the Interior Ministry. Monday's bombing took place in Tirin Kot, the capital of Oruzgan province. The province is part of a swath of southern Afghanistan where the insurgency is at its strongest. The Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the attack and boasted that its bombers could strike anywhere. The Afghan Defense Ministry said Monday that three other would-be suicide bombers, already outfitted with explosives-filled vests, had been arrested in Oruzgan, but did not say when. The police officers, most of them reservists, were in the midst of an exercise when the attacker managed to make his way into their compound and into the center of a large group, said Juma Gul Himas, the provincial police chief. It was not immediately known whether the bomber was searched or screened upon entry. |
| Posted by:Steve White |