KANDAHAR: A suicide bomber attacked a police drug eradication unit in southern
Afghanistan on Thursday, killing five people and wounding 17 others, an official
said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
The attacker struck the patrol in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province,
a major drug-producing area, said Kamal Uddin, the deputy provincial police
chief.
The members of the force were traveling in a convoy of vehicles headed for
nearby districts to eradicate poppies at the time of the blast, Uddin said.
Five people, two police officers and three civilians, were killed in the blast,
said Daud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the provincial governor. The blast also
wounded four policemen and 13 civilians, Ahmadi said.
Two police vehicles and three shops were damaged in the explosion, Uddin said.
He initially reported four dead policemen, but the casualty figures were later
revised by Ahmadi.
A spokesman for the Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast in a phone call
to an Associated Press reporter in southern Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Interior Ministry blamed 'the narcotics mafia' for the
attack.
Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the main ingredient in
heroin. The Afghan opium trade accounts for 90 percent of worldwide production.
The UN estimated last year that up to $500 million from the illegal drug trade
flows to Taliban fighters and criminal groups.
The top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, said his
troops have increased their targeting of drug operations by eight- or 10-fold in
the past four months, specifically for drug lords or operations that could be
tied to insurgents and insurgent funding.
McKiernan told newspaper executives gathered at The Associated Press annual
meeting Monday that heroin trafficking was 'a debilitating system across this
country that eats away at good governance, eats away at progress and it
certainly provides a funding source for the insurgency.'
On Wednesday, a raid by US coalition troops in eastern Khost province killed
four people, including two alleged female militants, and wounded another woman,
the coalition said in a statement on Thursday.
Yaqub Khan, the deputy provincial police chief, said the US troops did not
inform police about the raid.
Khan said the provincial police counterterrorism unit was investigating whether
those killed were militants or civilians.
The coalition said those killed, including the women in the compound, had fired
on its troops.
But a spokesman for Khost's governor, Kochai Nasery, said the women were
civilians. Among the dead was a baby boy, but it was unclear what caused his
death, Nasery said.
The issue of civilian deaths at the hands of US and other foreign troops has
caused friction between President Hamid Karzai and his government's foreign
backers in the country.
Karzai has demanded many times that raids by foreign troops on Afghan villages
stop, and that any operation should be done in coordination with Afghan
authorities.
US and NATO officials say the militants regularly operate from civilian areas,
thus putting civilians in danger.
Separately, six alleged militants were killed and another detained in a
coalition operation in the southern province of Kandahar late Wednesday, the
coalition said.
Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, where
thousands more US troops have been ordered to join the fight by President Barack
Obama to try to reverse militant gains in the last three years. |
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