KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 31 December 2005 — Four Afghan policemen were killed and seven others were injured when a bomb planted by suspected Taleban militants exploded near a checkpoint, an official said yesterday. The blast happened late Thursday in the Hazar Joft district of the insurgency-prone southern province of Helmand, local police commander Bahadur Khan told AFP. “Four policemen were killed, seven others were wounded,” Khan said.
The injured have been taken to a hospital in the provincial capital Lashkarga. He said the “enemies of Afghans,” a reference to the ousted Taleban regime, were behind the act. Violence blamed on the Taleban regime, which was ousted by a US-led military operation in late 2001 for sheltering Osama Bin Laden, has soared this year in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
A purported Taleban spokesman, Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi, called AFP from an unknown location and said his guerrillas had planted the remotely detonated device. “It was our work,” said Ahmadi, who often calls the media to claim responsibility for attacks on Afghan and foreign troops on behalf of the hard-line Islamic militia.
“One of our mujahedeen (holy warriors) succeeded in planting the bomb just outside the checkpost,” he added. Taleban rebels have pledged to topple the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai and violence this year alone has claimed more than 1,500 lives, the majority of them militants. A US-led force of around 19,000 troops is trying to tame the insurgency.
Also on Thursday, two US soldiers were injured by a roadside bomb in Helmand, while a similar attack in neighboring Kunar province on Wednesday killed a US soldier and an Afghan national working with the coalition.
