JALALABAD, Afghanistan, 2 June 2004 — A senior police official was killed in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad yesterday when a bomb attached to his office chair detonated, doctors said. Haji Ajab Shah was killed at the police headquarters of the city, the capital of Nangarhar province.
The size of the explosive device or how it was triggered was not immediately known. An aide to Shah was also wounded in the blast, which occurred at the start of the official day, police sources said. Jalalabad, which lies 130 km east of Kabul, has been hit by a series of blasts targeting government offices and Western aid agencies, but most of them have not caused serious casualties.
The attack was the latest sign of rising violence, mainly in the Afghan south and east, ahead of Afghanistan’s landmark elections planned for September. Authorities have blamed members of the ousted Taleban regime and their militant allies for the spate of attacks in which more than 700 people have been killed since August.
The Taleban, overthrown in a US-led war in late 2001, have vowed to disrupt elections, which President Hamid Karzai is expected to contest and win. Violence has also been linked to tribal rivalry and the illicit drug trade which is rampant in parts of the south and east close to the border with Pakistan.
US-led troops killed six Taleban in a raid yesterday in the southern province of Zabul, a provincial military official said. The six Taleban were killed in a surprise attack by US soldiers in the Sori district of Zabul province, division commander Nimatullah Tokhi told Reuters from Qalat, the provincial capital.
Four US soldiers from a special forces unit were killed when their vehicle hit a mine in Zabul province on Saturday. “We had tipped the Americans off about the presence of Taleban and they went and killed them,” Tokhi said, adding that US forces apparently suffered no casualties in the gunbattle that followed the attack.
The Zabul province bordering Pakistan has been the scene of mounting attacks by suspected Taleban guerrillas in recent months, mainly against Afghan troops.
Meanwhile, some 2,000 prisoners have been detained by US-led forces in Afghanistan since the start of fighting in late 2001, the commander of coalition forces in the country said yesterday.
“The total collect numbers of detainees is only about 2,000 over the course of the last two and a half years,” US Lt. Gen. David Barno said, adding that some of these had been released. “We just have around 400 detainees across Afghanistan today.”
Barno confirmed yesterday that there were 20 detention centers in Kabul with 19 of those transit centers feeding into the primary prison at Bagram air base some 50 kilometers north of the capital.
The US is investigating two cases of alleged prisoner abuse including assault and sleep deprivation in Afghanistan while Brig. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby is due to report back to Barno on a “top to bottom” review of detention procedures by mid-June.
“I intend to take rapid action on any areas of concern which he (Jacoby) identifies,” Barno told a press conference in Kabul. Barno said he would determine this week whether the International Committee of the Red Cross, which regularly visits Bagram, would be able to check prisoners at the southern Kandahar prison.
The general, who commands a 20,000-strong mainly American force, said he expected attacks to increase in the lead-up to Afghanistan’s landmark September elections, particularly against humanitarian workers.
In another development, NATO formally took command of Kabul’s military airport yesterday when Germany ended more than two years in charge by handing over control to Icelandic troops.
A lifeline for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, the military component of Kabul international airport will now be managed by soldiers from some 24 nations under the command of the Icelandic personnel. “Today marks more than a change of command, it marks ... the start of a truly international force here,” deputy commander of the peacekeeping force, German Maj. Gen. Wolfgang Korte said.
