Afghan bombs kill 14

Two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan killed 14 people, including a group of insurgents who were trying to rig an improvised bomb against Afghan and foreign forces, officials said Tuesday. In the volatile Nawzad district of Helmand province a group of seven Taliban militants died while trying to cut a pipe bomb and fit it into a vehicle on Monday, provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP. “The explosive-packed pipe detonated killing a Taliban commander along with six of his fighters,” he said.
Roadside bombs are the most commonly used weapons by the Taliban, who are leading a 10-year insurgency and are responsible for the bulk of deaths among the US-led coalition and Afghan security forces. On the same day, seven people, including six women, were killed in an explosion in Nawa district of the same province inside a house used by a local Taliban commander Mullah Manan, a senior security official said. “We have intelligence that the Taliban commander was making bombs inside the house,” Mohammad Ismail Hotak told AFP.
Helmand has experienced increasing militancy over the past couple of years despite Afghan and NATO-led operations. The number of civilian casualties, many of them killed by roadside bombs, hit a record of 3,021 last year, according to a UN annual report.
On Monday, a Taliban suicide car bomber targeted NATO troops at an airport in eastern Afghanistan killing nine people, on a seventh day of violence over the burning of the holy Quran at a US airbase. The insurgents also said they were behind an attempt to poison foreign troops, as the death toll from unrest and protests that spread to even usually peaceful parts of the war-ravaged country hit about 40. Six civilians, an Afghan soldier and two local guards were killed in the bomb attack on the military base at Jalalabad airport, but NATO troops escaped unhurt.
The Taliban said it was revenge for the holy Quran burning. “The foreign forces have insulted our religion and this attack was revenge,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP. The hardliners also claimed that an “Afghan cook” working on their behalf poisoned the food of NATO troops at another base in the same province of Nangarhar.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) launched an investigation after “traces of bleach” were found in fruit and coffee, a spokesman said. “There were no injuries, no fatality. The investigation is ongoing,” said Master Sergeant Nicholas Conner. On Sunday, seven US soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack during an anti-US demonstration at their base in northern Kunduz province, police said.
On Saturday, two US advisers were shot dead in the Interior Ministry in Kabul, just days after two US troops died as an Afghan soldier turned his weapon on them as thousands of demonstrators approached their base in the east. The US embassy has been in lockdown since the violence erupted and has warned of a “heightened potential threat to American citizens in Afghanistan”. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the deadly protests over the burning of Holy Quran by US soldiers “must stop”. “We deeply regret the incident that has led to this protest, but we also believe that violence must stop and the hard work for building a more peaceful and secure Afghanistan must continue,” she told a news conference.