At least 19 people including 10 policemen were killed and 39 wounded in three suicide attacks in Afghanistan Tuesday, officials said, as spring heralded the “fighting season”. Defence Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said “as the season changes we will have more fighting than in winter”. He told a news conference that “attacks on Afghan forces are intensifying” as they take more responsibility for security from US-led NATO troops who are due to withdraw by the end of 2014.
Twelve people died and 28 were wounded when two suicide attackers rammed a car bomb into a government compound near the western city of Herat, President Hamid Karzai’s office said in a statement condemning the attack. Women and children were among the victims, the statement said. Provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb told reporters that the bombers were being pursued by police when they detonated the vehicle at the entrance to the Guzara district compound along the road from the airport to the city. “The car was under our surveillance. It was ordered twice to stop but they didn’t stop,” said the police chief. “There were two individuals in the car, one was wearing a burqa. One of the bombers is totally shattered and the other person’s body is still there with his (suicide) vest still unexploded.” The dead included three policemen, a provincial spokesman said. Just hours later, four policemen died and five were wounded when three suicide bombers stormed their compound in the southern province of Helmand, a local government spokesman said. Two of the bombers set off explosives strapped to their bodies and a third was shot dead by police guarding the Musa Qala police offices in the province, Daud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the provincial administration, told AFP. In the third attack “a suicide bomber on a motorbike targeted a group of local police who were on their way to help police forces attacked earlier in the district,” Ahmadi said.
