| |
| |
![]() |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan : A bomb fixed to a bicycle killed an Afghan civilian in Kandahar city Saturday and strikes by international forces killed at least nine insurgents a day earlier, officials said.
The bomb went off in the troubled southern city as a police vehicle passed by, police officer Faiz Mohammad told AFP from the site.
"Police did not suffer any casualty but a civilian passerby was killed and another was injured," he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the extremist Taliban movement is behind a spate of similar bombings in Kandahar province, the heartland of the radical movement that was in government between 1996 and 2001.
The Afghan army said meanwhile that international forces had bombed a Taliban mountain hideout in the southwestern province of Farah on Friday, killing seven rebels.
The strikes were part of a new Afghan and international military operation kicked off in Farah on Friday, said the most senior Afghan army commander in western Afghanistan, Jalandar Shah Behnam.
Farah has seen a string of bloody attacks in recent weeks, including a suicide bombing on Thursday that killed about 16 people.
The US military said separately that "several extremists" were killed in operations in the eastern province of Khost aimed at a Taliban who was known to have helped to organise bomb attacks on Afghan and international soldiers.
The operation on Friday was in the Sabari district where a suicide attack in March killed two NATO soldiers and two civilians.
The international forces operating in Afghanistan do not issue figures for the casualties they inflict in their operations against militants.
It said however that among those killed in Khost were two militants seen manoeuvring against soldiers and who were targeted in air strikes.
Four more suspects were arrested, it said.
Afghan and US military officials announced separately that 15 suspected militants were captured Friday in the western province of Herat and in eastern Nangarhar, bordering Pakistan.
The Taliban are trying to take back power in an insurgency that has gained pace in the past two years with a string of suicide attacks, some of which Afghan security officials say show signs of Al-Qaeda influence. - AFP/ms
|
