Six killed in bomb attacks, ambush in Afghanistan

Sep 2, 2008, 12:06 GMT

Kabul - Six people, including two civilians, were killed in roadside bomb attacks and a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

Two policemen were killed and four others wounded in a roadside bomb blast in the south-eastern province of Khost on Tuesday morning, said Wazir Padshah, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

He said a police patrol vehicle hit a mine in the Darouqa area of the provincial capital, also called Khost.

Another roadside bomb in Spin Boldak district of southern Kandahar province on Tuesday killed a road construction worker and wounded another, Abdul Razek Khan, a police border commander, said.

He blamed Taliban militants, whose regime was ousted in a US military invasion in late 2001, for the attack.

Taliban fighters ambushed a private security company's vehicle in the south-eastern province of Wardak on late Monday, killing three private security guards, Adam Khan Serat, spokesman for the provincial governor, said.

Meanwhile, a child who was wounded by NATO artillery fire in the south-eastern province of Paktika province died of injuries on Monday, the alliance said in a statement.

The latest death took to four the number of children killed in the attack, while six others were wounded.

In another development, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) denied on Tuesday that its forces or troops from the US-led coalition forces were involved in a raid against a house on the eastern outskirts of Kabul.

Hundreds of residents of Hutkhail took to the streets on Monday, accusing the US military forces of mounting a pre-dawn raid on a house in which a couple and two of their children were killed.

'After an extensive investigation, ISAF reports that neither it nor the US-led coalition's forces were conducting any offensive operations in Kabul the evening of August 31,' ISAF said in a statement.

The incident came some 10 days after a US-led air raid in the western province of Herat killed 90 civilians, including 60 children, according to separate United Nations and Afghan government investigations.

More than 3,500 people, mostly insurgents but including more than 1,000 civilians, have been killed in violence so far this year, according figures provided by Afghan government and international forces in the country.