Taliban attacks killed four Afghans and wounded 33 other people including Italian soldiers at a reconstruction headquarters and a crowded roundabout on Monday, officials said. Five Italian troops were among those wounded in the usually peaceful, historic city of Herat, which within weeks will become one of the first places in the war-torn country to transition from NATO to Afghan security control. There was a large explosion at the gate of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) which gouged out a crater and scattered fragments of twisted metal, and another blast at a crowded roundabout in the city centre, officials said.
An AFP reporter said there was thick black smoke rising from the headquarters of the Italian-led PRT in the western Afghan city, and gunfire was also initially reported shortly after the blast. “In a suicide bomb at the gates of the PRT and a planted motorcycle bomb explosion, 33 are injured and four others killed,” provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb told AFP in reference to both attacks. Four children and a woman were among the wounded, said Herat’s provincial health director, Ghulam Sayed Rashid.
