A suicide car bomb attack and a separate blast at a checkpoint in Afghanistan killed at least seven policemen on Thursday, officials said. In the first attack, a suicide bomber rammed a car into an Afghan police checkpoint, killing at least five policemen and wounding six others in the southern province of Kandahar, an official said. The attacker drove his explosives-laden car into the checkpoint at the police headquarters of Arghistan district, an official said. “Five policemen were martyred and six others injured in this cowardly attack,” he said.
Kandahar is the largest city in southern Afghanistan and the birthplace of the Taliban, who have been waging a bloody insurgency since being ousted from power by the US-led invasion in late 2001 following the 9/11 attacks. In the second incident, an explosion at a police picket in the capital of eastern Nangarhar province killed at least two policemen. Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the Nangarhar governor, confirmed the incident, but added the security forces were still investigating the cause of the blast. Militants frequently target Afghan police and military, which are due to assume responsibility for the country’s security from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) by the end of 2014. The attacks come weeks after the Taliban announced their “spring offensive”, a campaign of bombings and attacks that picks up every year as weather conditions improve. There are presently 130,000 US-led NATO forces fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.
