9
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up next to a police patrol in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing 24 people, including 19 civilians, a provincial police chief said.
The attack in the southern province of Uruzgan also killed five police officers and wounded more than 30 others, police chief Juma Gul Himat said.
The bomber struck the police patrol in a busy intersection of Deh Rawood district, Mr. Himat said. The bombing also damaged or destroyed about nine shops in the area, he said.
Most of those killed and wounded were shopkeepers and young boys selling cigarettes and other goods in the street, Mr. Himat said.
Afghan civilians have suffered from a rash of bombings this month. Around 55 civilians were killed in a massive bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on Monday, while a government commission said this week that U.S. air strikes killed 47 civilians in Nangarhar on July 6.
More than 2,300 people – mostly militants – have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of official figures.
In eastern Kunar province, fighting erupted when militants attacked a NATO International Security Assistance Force outpost, the military alliance said in a statement.
NATO accused militants of using civilian homes and a mosque for cover. It said there were casualties on both sides, but it did not provide any figures.
General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Defence Ministry confirmed the fighting and said four Afghan soldiers were wounded.
In other violence, an ISAF soldier died in a roadside blast in the southern Helmand province on Sunday, the statement said, without identifying the victim's nationality.
In the country's north, another soldier serving with the ISAF has died of wounds caused by an explosion Saturday, the military alliance said in a statement.
The statement did not give any further details of the explosion. The soldier's nationality was not been disclosed.
There are nearly 53,000 troops from 40 nations serving in the NATO security force in Afghanistan.
Elsewhere, Taliban militants killed two women in central Afghanistan after accusing them of working as prostitutes on a U.S. base.
The women, dressed in blue burqas, were shot late Saturday just outside Ghazni city in central Afghanistan, said Sayed Ismal, a spokesman for Ghazni's governor. He called the two “innocent local people.”
Taliban fighters told Associated Press Television News that the two were killed for allegedly running a prostitution ring catering to U.S. soldiers and other foreign contractors at a U.S. base in Ghazni city.
A U.S. military spokesman, First Lieutenant Nathan Perry, said he has never heard of allegations “anything close to that nature.”
In Logar province, gunmen abducted member of parliament Abdul Wali and his driver on Sunday, provincial police chief General Mohammad Mustafa said.
