Pre-election bombing kills 12
AFGHANISTAN: A remote control bomb targeting police killed 12 people
in the heart of the western city of Herat Monday in the latest attack to
hit beleaguered Afghanistan just weeks away from elections.
Another 20 people were wounded in the attack, which struck during the
morning rush hour, police said. An AFP reporter saw several police
vehicles and private taxis damaged.
The attack heightened concerns that the country’s Taliban-led
insurgency is spiking less than three weeks before the presidential and
provincial council elections on August 20.
Provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai said the blast was caused
by a bomb planted in a roadside rubbish bin and remotely detonated.
“It exploded as the convoy of district police passed by,” he told
reporters.
“Twelve people have been killed in this explosion and 20 other people
have been wounded. Among those killed are two police.”
A woman and a child were among the dead, he said.
The police chief of the nearby district of Ingil was also wounded,
the officer said.
Motorcycles and bicycles lay discarded at the site, and children’s
shoes and a woman’s veil were left abandoned on the ground, the AFP
reporter saw. A large election billboard was burned and branches ripped
off trees.
There was some police gunfire after the blast, the reporter said.
A doctor at the city’s main hospital said 29 wounded had been
admitted as well as 12 bodies. “The condition of some of the wounded is
not good,” Barakatullah Mohammadi said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion.
The Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamist militia, have carried out
multiple bombings as part of an insurgency that is now the bloodiest
since they were overthrown in late 2001 by a US-led invasion.
The group has called on Afghans to boycott the elections and ordered
its fighters to block all roads a day before polling stations open.
Herat, Monday, AFP |