Five people killed in blasts in Kabul

May 5, 2008, 10:54 GMT

Kabul - At least five people, including three children, were killed and more than 20 were wounded Monday in three accidental explosions in Kabul, officials said.

In eastern Afghanistan, meanwhile, a NATO-contracted aircraft made an emergency landing Monday after coming under fire by suspected insurgents, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Three children were killed and two more were wounded when an artillery shell exploded while they were playing with it in western Kabul, said Zemaria Bashary, Interior Ministry spokesman.

Another blast occurred when a police officer accidentally dropped a rocket-propelled-grenade as counternarcotics police forces were preparing to set off for a poppy-eradication mission, Bashary said.

The blast, which occurred inside a counternarcotics police base on the northern outskirts of the Afghan capital, wounded more than a dozen police officers, said a police official who did not want to be named because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

In a third incident, a municipal government worker and a child were killed and nine others, including workers and civilian passers-by, were wounded when a buried mine exploded in northern Kabul, said Sayed Mehdi, a local government official.

He said the workers were digging when the mine detonated.

Mines and unexploded ordnance litter Afghanistan after three decades of war, and they kill and maim dozens of Afghans each month, according to estimates by the United Nations office in Kabul.

In Kunar province, a civilian aircraft contracted by NATO forces made an emergency landing after coming under fire from insurgents, the ISAF said in a statement.

'The aircrew inspected the plane and found one bullet hole that did minor damage to the aircraft,' the statement said, adding, 'No one aboard the military-contracted plane was injured.'