Dozens of civilians were killed in a bloody day across Afghanistan on Wednesday as a twin suicide bombing ripped through a crowded makeshift bazaar and a NATO air strike hit a home, Afghan officials said.
Two NATO soldiers were also killed in a helicopter crash, the cause of which was under investigation, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. Twenty-three people were killed and 50 others were wounded in the suicide attack in a car park crammed with vehicles supplying the largest NATO base in southern Afghanistan, police said.
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck first and as a crowd gathered to help the victims a second bomber walked into their midst and set off explosives strapped to his body, Kandahar provincial police chief General Abdul Raziq told AFP. “All casualties are civilians — not a single military person,” he said. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying on their website that “several dozen of the foreign terrorist forces and their puppets were killed on Wednesday in a martyrdom attack”. Hours earlier, at least 15 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a NATO air strike on a home in Logar province south of Kabul, police said. ISAF said “multiple insurgents” were killed in the air strike, which was ordered after troops were attacked “with small-arms fire and a grenade”. But deputy provincial police chief Rais Khan Sadeq Abdulrahimzai told AFP: “18 civilians, including women and children, are dead”, adding that seven Taliban insurgents were also killed.
Provincial government spokesman Din Mohammad Darvish said “around 15 civilians are dead” after the attack in the early hours of Wednesday.
An AFP correspondent said he saw at least 15 bodies that had been loaded into five vehicles and driven by villagers to the provincial capital of Pol-i-Alam.
