KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 16 June 2006 — A bomb ripped through a bus taking workers to an airport run by the US-led coalition in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing 10 people.
The attack was claimed by the Taleban movement, which is escalating violent assaults in the south of the country as NATO forces roll out a planned deployment there.
Another three Afghans working for foreign organizations were killed in separate blasts in the south as the Taleban warned it was targeting locals working for foreign groups, especially US forces.
Seven of the people killed in the bus blast in the center of Kandahar city were employed at Kandahar Air Field, coalition spokesman Maj. Quentin Innes said.
They were five interpreters, a cleaner and a driver, Innes said. The three other victims were bystanders. Sixteen people were wounded, he said.
“We believe it was a bomb planted on the bus...It was probably timed,” Innes said.
Taleban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the blast was caused by a time bomb.
“These people were working for Americans. That is why we targeted them,” he told AFP by telephone. “Anyone, anywhere in Afghanistan working for US forces will be targeted. They must quit working for Americans or their friends.”
The death toll was the highest for civilians in months of regular attacks in Afghanistan. Most are blamed on Taleban insurgents, who are reportedly aided by other Islamist groups, including Al-Qaeda.
“The explosion was huge,” said witness Tahir Shah, who helped to carry three wounded people and five bodies from the bus. Shops and vehicles nearby were damaged and blood and flesh were scattered over the site, witnesses said.
The heavily secured airfield serves as Kandahar’s airport but only accepts military planes or those from the United Nations or other aid groups.
In a separate attack yesterday, two Afghans employed by a Turkish road construction company were killed when a bomb exploded under their vehicle in southwestern Nimroz province, a provincial government official said.
An Afghan deminer contracted to the UN demining agency in Afghanistan was killed in a separate bomb blast on a vehicle in the same province, a spokeswoman for the organization said. Two others were wounded.
Five of the agency’s staff have been killed in similar attacks in the year to March 2006, spokeswoman Denise Duclaux said.
Despite the presence of more than 30,000 troops and the growing capacity of the Afghan security forces, Taleban insurgents have been able to launch significant attacks in the past weeks, increasing fears that the radical movement may stage a Taleban comeback.
The Taleban emerged in Kandahar province in the chaos of civil war in the early 1990s and took control of the central government in 1996. It sheltered the Al-Qaeda network and was removed when it failed to surrender the group’s chief Osama Bin Laden following the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide attacks on US cities.
