AFGHANISTAN: Car bomb kills eight as Afghan violence mounts
Posted by warvictims on March 26, 2008
Car bomb kills eight as Afghan violence mounts
Agence France Presse
Eight civilians were killed by a car bomb near a crowded bazaar in troubled southern Afghanistan Wednesday, while eight others were killed in separate violence, officials said.
The car bomb exploded in Gereshk district in volatile Helmand province, which has seen much of the violence during the Taliban insurgency launched after the 2001 US invasion.
“An explosives-filled car, which was abandoned, exploded and killed eight people and wounded 17 others. It happened near a weekly bazaar,” provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told AFP.
Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to AFP.
“We carried out the bombing. It was a car bomb that was exploded by one of our Mujahed (holy warriors) using a remote-controlled device,” he said.
The blast was similar to other attacks carried out by Taliban insurgents in their ongoing campaign against the Kabul government and Afghan security forces.
But Andiwal said there was no “military presence” in the area at the time of the blast. “All the casualties are civilians,” he said.
A police officer was killed earlier Wednesday in a roadside bombing in Helmand.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, five Taliban-linked insurgents were killed after attacking a civilian convoy of trucks carrying supplies for foreign forces in neighboring Uruzgan province, a police commander said.
Three policemen were wounded in the hour-long exchange of fire between rebels and police who were escorting the convoy, provincial police chief Juma Gul Hemat told AFP.
“The Taliban attacked the convoy. Five of them were killed as our brave police who were escorting the convoy attacked them back. Three police were wounded,” he added.
Another policeman was killed and two others were captured by Taliban following fighting overnight in southern Ghazni province, a police official said.
And one police officer was killed and another injured in a roadside bomb blast near Kabul on Tuesday, a police official said in the capital.
The hardline Taliban movement was forced from government in late 2001 in a US-led invasion of Afghanistan. They are waging a bloody insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives.
