Roadside bombs kill 36 civilians in Afghanistan (Roundup)

Sep 29, 2009, 14:03 GMT

   Kandahar - A roadside bomb believed to have been planted on a road by Taliban militants struck a bus Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, killing 30 passengers and wounding 39 other civilians, officials said.

   Two other roadside bombs in eastern and southern Afghanistan killed six more civilians while a Taliban commander was killed in the northern province of Kunduz and an Afghan-US military operation left dozens of insurgents dead in a western province, officials added.

   The latest incident involved the bus travelling from the western province of Herat to Kandahar city when it was blown up in the Maiwand district of Kandahar province, said Zelmai Ayoubi, spokesman for Kandahar's governor.

   The Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement that the blast killed 30 civilians - 10 children, seven women and 13 men - in the village of Ali Shir. It said 39 other civilians were injured.

   He blamed 'enemies of Afghanistan and Islam' for the attack, a term often used by Afghan officials to describe Taliban insurgents.

   President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as 'unforgivable' in a statement released by his office and said that such attacks would not stop Afghans from rebuilding their country.

   Also in Kandahar city, a roadside bomb hit a civilian vehicle in the Sarposa area Monday afternoon, killing five civilians - two women and three men, the Interior Ministry said in a separate statement Tuesday.

   A woman was killed and another was injured when they stepped on a bomb in the Spinghar district of the eastern province of Nangarhar Tuesday, the statement said, adding that both women were working in a farm field when the incident occurred.

   The Taliban's homemade bombs, which are intended for Afghan and NATO-led forces in the country, often kill or injure civilians, who have borne the brunt of insurgent attacks in the past eight years since the fall of the Taliban's ultra-Islamic regime.

   About 1,500 Afghan civilians were killed from January to August, up 20 per cent from the same period last year, according to a United Nations report. Around two-thirds of those were killed by insurgents while most of the other 30 per cent were killed by NATO airstrikes.

   Roadside attacks have claimed the lives of more than three-quarters of the 370 foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year, according to NATO officials.

   Meanwhile, a known Taliban commander, Mullah Rashid, was killed and his bodyguard was wounded in a fight with Afghan police forces in an area close to Kunduz city Monday night, said Abdul Razaq Yaqoubi, the provincial police chief.

   Rashid and his bodyguard were riding on motorbikes when police identified them and the clash broke out, Yaqoubi said.

   Meanwhile, the Afghan Defence Ministry said in a statement that dozens of militants were killed Monday in a joint operation by Afghan army soldiers and US troops in the Bala Boluk district of Farah province.

   Three district-level Taliban commanders were among those killed while five bodies of insurgents were left on the battlefield, the statement said, adding that five Afghan army soldiers were also injured.

   Military officials in the region and provincial authorities claimed that up to 40 militants were killed in the daylong operation, but a Defence Ministry spokesman in Kabul said it was difficult to give exact figures because the militants had retrieved the bodies of their comrades before retreating from the area.