Seraphim
01-07-2004, 09:10 PM
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A time bomb hidden in an apple cart and a roadway shooting have left 27 dead as the toll rose from the latest violence in southern Afghanistan, police and officials said.
The death toll climbed to 15 on Wednesday as two more died overnight from the bomb that tore through a group of curious children in the city of Kandahar on Tuesday, police said. In neighbouring Helmand province, unidentified gunmen stopped two cars on a roadway and fatally shot 12 men in them, provincial officials said.
The violence - two years after the fall of the brutal Taliban regime - underlines the failure of the national government and its foreign backers to bring security to Afghans weary from nearly a quarter-century of conflict.
The Kandahar bomb was in an apple cart, not strapped to a bicycle as initially believed, said the city's deputy police chief, Salim Khan.
The explosion was preceded by a smaller blast - which had lured a crowd of onlookers, mostly children. A battered sneaker lay amid pools of blood, mangled bicycles and glass late Tuesday.
"It was a time bomb, hidden under the apples," Khan said, adding that two more children died from their injuries overnight, bringing the death toll to 13 children and two adults. Thirty-six were wounded.
Officials and the U.S. military said they suspected the Taliban in the bombing in Kandahar, once a stronghold of the Islamic fundamentalist militia.
The blast went off on a street used regularly by U.S. military patrols.
A man arrested as he tried to flee the bombing scene on Tuesday had not told interrogators a single word, including his name, Khan said.
It remains unclear whether civilians, U.S. soldiers, guards from a nearby Afghan military barracks or others were the intended target of the bombing. Kandahar Gov. Yusuf Pashtun had been expected to pass the area near the time of the blast, officials said.
The bomb spoiled celebration of a new constitution ratified Sunday.
It wasn't clear who carried out the roadway shooting in Helmand. Provincial governor Mohammed Wali Alizai told The Associated Press that the victims were all ethnic Hazaras in an area that is predominantly ethnic Pashtuns, and suggested that the assailants wanted to stir ethnic tensions.
Shootings, kidnappings and bomb attacks on soldiers and civilians have riddled southern and eastern Afghanistan in past months. The Taliban has taken responsibility for many of them.
The violence threatens the timetable for the national elections slated for June and has all but halted reconstruction in a large area along the Pakistani border.
There have been several attacks in Kandahar, the focus of a U.S. plan to deploy hundreds of troops and reconstruction workers across the south and east in the run-up to the vote.
Meanwhile, an Afghan employee of a U.S.-based aid group, who was kidnapped in the south by suspected Taliban, had been released.
He'd been stopped and abducted on Monday while driving a pickup in Zabul province on the newly refurbished Kabul-Kandahar highway.
He was released Tuesday after pleading that he was just a poor driver, then walked for four hours back to a road and hitched a ride to safety, said Vilal Ahmad of the emergency relief group Shelter for Life.
A Turkish engineer working on the road was abducted in October, and two Indians were kidnapped Dec. 6. All were subsequently released unharmed. Taliban claimed responsibility in both cases.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A time bomb hidden in an apple cart and a roadway shooting have left 27 dead as the toll rose from the latest violence in southern Afghanistan, police and officials said.
The death toll climbed to 15 on Wednesday as two more died overnight from the bomb that tore through a group of curious children in the city of Kandahar on Tuesday, police said. In neighbouring Helmand province, unidentified gunmen stopped two cars on a roadway and fatally shot 12 men in them, provincial officials said.
The violence - two years after the fall of the brutal Taliban regime - underlines the failure of the national government and its foreign backers to bring security to Afghans weary from nearly a quarter-century of conflict.
The Kandahar bomb was in an apple cart, not strapped to a bicycle as initially believed, said the city's deputy police chief, Salim Khan.
The explosion was preceded by a smaller blast - which had lured a crowd of onlookers, mostly children. A battered sneaker lay amid pools of blood, mangled bicycles and glass late Tuesday.
"It was a time bomb, hidden under the apples," Khan said, adding that two more children died from their injuries overnight, bringing the death toll to 13 children and two adults. Thirty-six were wounded.
Officials and the U.S. military said they suspected the Taliban in the bombing in Kandahar, once a stronghold of the Islamic fundamentalist militia.
The blast went off on a street used regularly by U.S. military patrols.
A man arrested as he tried to flee the bombing scene on Tuesday had not told interrogators a single word, including his name, Khan said.
It remains unclear whether civilians, U.S. soldiers, guards from a nearby Afghan military barracks or others were the intended target of the bombing. Kandahar Gov. Yusuf Pashtun had been expected to pass the area near the time of the blast, officials said.
The bomb spoiled celebration of a new constitution ratified Sunday.
It wasn't clear who carried out the roadway shooting in Helmand. Provincial governor Mohammed Wali Alizai told The Associated Press that the victims were all ethnic Hazaras in an area that is predominantly ethnic Pashtuns, and suggested that the assailants wanted to stir ethnic tensions.
Shootings, kidnappings and bomb attacks on soldiers and civilians have riddled southern and eastern Afghanistan in past months. The Taliban has taken responsibility for many of them.
The violence threatens the timetable for the national elections slated for June and has all but halted reconstruction in a large area along the Pakistani border.
There have been several attacks in Kandahar, the focus of a U.S. plan to deploy hundreds of troops and reconstruction workers across the south and east in the run-up to the vote.
Meanwhile, an Afghan employee of a U.S.-based aid group, who was kidnapped in the south by suspected Taliban, had been released.
He'd been stopped and abducted on Monday while driving a pickup in Zabul province on the newly refurbished Kabul-Kandahar highway.
He was released Tuesday after pleading that he was just a poor driver, then walked for four hours back to a road and hitched a ride to safety, said Vilal Ahmad of the emergency relief group Shelter for Life.
A Turkish engineer working on the road was abducted in October, and two Indians were kidnapped Dec. 6. All were subsequently released unharmed. Taliban claimed responsibility in both cases.