Suicide attackers and a remotely-controlled bomb killed more than 40 people in Afghanistan Tuesday as the nation prepared to celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan, officials said. Three suicide bombers killed 36 people, mostly civilians shopping for Eid celebrations, in a bazaar in the capital of Afghanistan’s southwestern Nimroz province on the border with Iran, the provincial governor said. Hours later in the northern province of Kunduz, a bomb attached to a motorcycle killed up to 10 people in the market of Archi district near the border with Tajikistan, provincial spokesman Enayatullah Khaliq told AFP.
“A bomb rigged to a motorcycle was remotely detonated in the market of Archi district this evening killing ten civilians and injuring more than 30 others,” he said. A police spokesman put the toll at nine adding that Taliban insurgents were responsible for the attack. The earlier attack on Zaranj city, capital of Nimroz, was the biggest in recent memory in the relatively peaceful province and one of the deadliest anywhere in the war-torn country this year. At least 66 people were injured. Three suicide attackers out of an original group of 11 blew themselves up in separate areas of the city, one outside a hospital, police said. “This was a group of 11 attackers who wanted to conduct simultaneous attacks across the city,” deputy provincial police chief Mujibullah Latifi told AFP. “Security forces killed two of the suicide attackers last night and detained three others this morning. Three managed to detonate themselves while three others were gunned down. “We have a lot of civilian casualties because two of the attackers detonated themselves near a bazaar where many people had gathered to do shopping for Eid”, the Muslim celebration at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, he said. “We have confirmation that 21 civilians and 15 members of the security forces have been killed in these attacks and more than 66 others injured,” provincial governor Abdul Karim Brahawi told AFP. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but similar attacks are usually blamed on Taliban insurgents fighting to overthrow the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
