http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=157312
Suicide bombers kill 173 in Afghanistan this year
By Associated Press
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - Updated: 07:11 AM EST
Suicide bombings have killed 173 people in Afghanistan this year, NATO
announced today amid a sharp escalation of Taliban violence that saw 16
militants slain in southern clashes and an aid worker gunned down in the
west.
Militants fired two rockets into the eastern city of Jalalabad ahead of
a visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani Prime Minister
Shaukat Aziz. Police said there were no casualties.
NATO spokesman Maj. Luke Knittig said 151 of the year's suicide attack
victims were Afghan civilians, including children, while the remainder
included NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan authorities.
Taliban-led militants in Afghanistan increasingly have been using
Iraqi-style tactics, including suicide, car and roadside bombings, in a bid
to topple the U.S.-backed Karzai government.
"Such blatant disregard for human life and potential undertaken by
insurgents who callously ask to be called mujahedeen (holy warriors) cannot
be more clear," Knittig told reporters in Kabul.
The release of the NATO tally follows a recent warning by the U.S.
military that a suicide bombing cell in Kabul was plotting to attack foreign
forces.
That warning came after a car bombing in the capital Friday killed at
least 16 people, including two American soldiers, in the deadliest suicide
attack in the city since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 for
sheltering Osama bin Laden.
Most of Afghanistan's surge in violence has taken place in volatile
southern provinces, where some 8,000 NATO forces took military control from
the U.S.-led coalition on Aug. 1. NATO commanders are calling for up to
2,500 more troops plus greater air support to crush the Taliban threat more
quickly.
In southern Helmand province, police killed 16 Taliban in a mountainous
area outside the town of Garmser, which militants recently took over for the
second time in two months, before Afghan and NATO forces claimed it again on
Monday.
Garmser police chief Ghulam Rassoul said the militants were killed in a
four-hour battle that began late yesterday and continued into today. Two
Taliban were arrested, one an area commander. Their comrades fled deeper
into the mountains, leaving the bodies of dead militants behind, officials
said.
Rassoul said he believed the militants were linked to a group that
seized Garmser's district headquarters on Sept. 6 and held it for six days.
The aid worker with U.N.-Habitat, a United Nations organization
dedicated to promoting adequate and sustainable housing, was killed on
Tuesday when militants fired on his car as he drove from a remote village
into the city of Farah, the capital of Farah province, said Maj. Gen. Sayed
Agha Saqib, the provincial police chief.
The victim's identity was not immediately available and police did not
speculate on the killers' motive.
Aid workers in remote parts of the country have been routinely targeted
by militants trying to derail the U.S.-backed reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Gunmen kidnapped a Colombian and two Afghans working with a French-funded
non-governmental organization west of Kabul on Sunday. No news has surfaced
on their whereabouts.
In the eastern Nangarhar province, where al-Qaida militants have long
been active, two rockets were fired into the provincial capital of Jalalabad
several hours before Karzai and Aziz arrived to open a road extension from
the city to a border town.
One rocket landed just outside the airport in Jalalabad at 7 a.m. where
the two leaders later landed and the other hit near a courthouse in the
city, said Ghaffour Khan, spokesman for the provincial police chief.
"The enemy fired rockets to sabotage this event, but fortunately there
were no casualties or damage," Khan told The Associated Press.
Tight security has been imposed throughout the city, with Afghan and
U.S.-led coalition soldiers blocking streets and searching cars, Khan said.
Aziz was leading a delegation of several senior Pakistani government
officials on a one-day visit.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have improved recently
following years of strained ties, mainly over allegations by Afghan
officials that remnants of their country's ousted Taliban regime are hiding
in Pakistan. Pakistan has rejected such charges.
Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Karzai met in Kabul this
month and pledged to jointly fight militants.
Pakistan was once a key Taliban supporter, but switched sides to become
a U.S. ally in its campaign against terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks in the United States
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