(Updates toll, adds Kunduz bombing)
By Hamid Shalizi and Rob Taylor
KABUL, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Islamist suicide bombers targeted
markets crowded with Ramadan shoppers and a major provincial
hospital in Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing at least 38 people
and wounding close to 100.
The bloodshed underscored a surge in fighting ahead of a
withdrawal by most Western combat troops and handover to Afghan
forces winding up in 2014. NATO-led forces have been struggling
to eliminate Taliban insurgent bastions, especially in the east.
Suicide bombings in markets in the southwest province of
Nimroz killed at least 28 people – 18 of them civilians and
three policemen – and wounded over 70, police said, in the
deadliest day of violence in the normally peaceful region since
2001.
Women and children and at least three members of the Afghan
security forces were among the dead in Zaranj, the capital of
the largely rural province, which lies on Afghanistan’s western
border with Iran.
Another bomber blew himself up in front of Zaranj hospital,
while two others detonated explosive vests in other areas of the
city, killing mostly civilians, President Hamid Karzai’s office
said in a statement.
The toll in Zaranj was expected to rise, provincial governor
Abdul Karim Barahawi said. “The attackers blew themselves up in
crowded markets to target civilians. There was no government
installation nearby,” Barahawi said.
Another 10 civilians were killed and 28 injured when a bomb
went off in a bazaar in Dashte Archi district in the northern
province of Kunduz, district Governor Sheikh Sadruddin said.
All the outdoor markets attacked by the bombers had been
packed with people buying food and supplies to end their daily
Ramadan fast, local police said.
An Afghan policeman killed 11 colleagues in Nimroz province
on Saturday, firing on them at a checkpoint in Dilaram district,
adding to a recent spate of such killings that have alarmed NATO
commanders and left 34 foreign soldiers dead.
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry this week that the Taliban
had not let up on attacks during Ramadan and security forces had
stepped up security ahead of the Eid al-Fitr festival ending
Islam’s holiest month.
Despite a decline in civilian casualties in the first half
of this year compared to 2011, the United Nations last week said
Afghan civilians were still bearing the brunt of fighting
between insurgents and the foreign-Afghan coalition.
A spokesman for NATO-led forces said he had no details on
Tuesday’s attacks. A member of parliament, Sharifa Hamidi, told
Afghanistan’s Tolo Television that the attacks were “brutal
(and) cannot be justified”.
A half-yearly report by the United Nations last week said
1,145 civilians have been killed between Jan. 1 and June 30 this
year as well as 1,954 wounded, representing a 15 percent decline
on last year due to a severe winter that hampered fighting.
Homemade bombs and suicide attacks remain the biggest
killers of Afghan civilians and Afghan and foreign troops.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
