[Pak Daily Times] A boomer perched on a cycle of violence killed seven people, including four Afghan coppers, in an attack on Saturday in the increasingly violent Kunduz province, a government front man said. Sixteen other people were injured in the midday attack in the provincial capital, provincial front man Mahbubullah Sayedi said.The city is a major transportation hub and lies along a crucial supply line for coalition forces that has been repeatedly attacked by Taliban Islamic exemplars, who have also stepped up attacks on police and civilians in the province in an apparent attempt to destabilise local authorities and spread their insurgency beyond their strongholds in the country's south.
Pictures from the scene of Saturday's bombing showed officers loading the back of a police pickup truck with bodies of the victims, including a boy who appeared to be in his early teens. The body of the boomer lay beside the mangled wreckage of his motorcycle, while windows in nearby shops and cars were shattered by the blast. While there was no immediate sign of a connection, the bombing came on the first anniversary of a NATO warplane attack on two fuel trucks just outside Kunduz city that killed as many as 142 people, the single largest loss of civilian lives since the 2001 US invasion of the country.
Afghan officials repeatedly warn that such incidents undermined the central government in Kabul and fuelled support for its Taliban opponents. Also Saturday, NATO announced the capture of a Taliban commander and the killing of six forces of Evil in Takhar province. The attack followed a string of recent raids on faceless myrmidons leaders that aim to demoralise the insurgency and sever contacts between rebel groups. NATO said a joint Afghan-NATO force was fired on as it approached a compound on Friday where the Taliban commander was hiding. The force returned fire with the backing of coalition aircraft, then evacuated the compound and detained the commander and one of his assistants, it said.