Kabul suicide bomb kills 13 troops, civilian workers (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – A suicide car bomber on Saturday killed 13 troops and civilian employees of the NATO-led force in Kabul, including Americans and a Canadian, in the deadliest single ground attack against the coalition in 10 years of war in Afghanistan.

"Five International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service members and eight ISAF civilian employees died following a suicide vehicle-born improvised explosive device attack in Kabul earlier today," ISAF said in a statement.

A Canadian military spokesman said one of the dead was a Canadian soldier. The Pentagon said earlier all 13 of the ISAF fatalities were American. But after the Canadian death was reported, a Pentagon spokesman said Americans were among the dead but that authorities were checking the identities of those killed.

Three other civilians and a police officer were also killed in the attack on a convoy of military vehicles, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry said.

Lethal attacks are relatively rare in the heavily guarded capital, Kabul, compared with the south and east of Afghanistan, but Saturday's killings came less than two months after insurgents launched a 20-hour assault on the U.S. Embassy in the capital.

The assault on the ISAF convoy took place late in the morning in the Darulaman area in the west of the city, near the national museum.

The former royal palace, now in ruins, is also in the area, along with several government departments and Afghan and foreign military bases.

The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it packed a four-wheel-drive vehicle with 700 kg (1,500 pounds) of explosives.

SECURITY HANDOVER

The attack is likely to heighten worries about the reach of insurgent forces as the United States and its allies prepare to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces by 2014.

"We are confident we can undertake the transition," NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, Simon Gass, said at a meeting in Kabul on Saturday before the attack. "If we compare the security situation to how it was two years ago, we can see very dramatic improvements in many areas."

In two other attacks on Saturday, three Australians and an Afghan linguist were killed in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan when an attacker wearing an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire on them, authorities in neighboring Kandahar province said.

In Kunar province, east of Kabul, a teenage female suicide bomber killed herself and wounded several National Directorate of Security members in an attack on the NDS building.

ISAF commander General John Allen condemned the attacks in a statement later on Saturday, as did the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

"Our common enemy continues to employ suicide attackers to kill innocent Afghan fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, as well as the Coalition forces who have volunteered to protect them," Allen said in a statement.

A spokesman for U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Pentagon chief was determined the United States would continue its "aggressive pursuit of the enemy."

Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the start of the war 10 years ago, according to the United Nations, despite the presence of more than 130,000 foreign troops.

ISAF says there has recently been a fall in attacks by insurgents, but that data exclude attacks that kill only civilians and attacks on Afghan security forces operating without international troops.

On Thursday, insurgents armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked two bases used by foreign troops in southern Afghanistan. An Afghan interpreter working for ISAF was killed in that attack, which stretched into Friday before the last of the four insurgents were killed.

There has been a series of high-profile assassinations, as well as day-to-day attacks by Taliban raiders, over the past year.

More than a dozen people were killed in the September attack on the U.S. Embassy and ISAF headquarters.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney; Writing and additional reporting by Daniel Magnowski in Kabul, Susan Cornwell in Washington and Janet Guttsman in Toronto; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Suicide bombers, gunmen kill 22 in central Afghanistan (Reuters)

PARWAN, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 22 people in a bold attack on a governor's compound in central Afghanistan during a security meeting Sunday, officials said, with gunbattles and several blasts heard before the assault was put down.

A Reuters witness and others nearby reported hearing at least five explosions as Afghan security forces inside the compound of Parwan governor Abdul Basir Salangi fought back.

Afghanistan's Interior Ministry said 22 people were killed and 34 wounded. The dead included 16 government employees and six police, it said in a statement.

Parwan lies about an hour's drive northwest of the capital, Kabul, another worrying sign of the reach of the Taliban and other insurgents.

Eight days ago, a rocket-propelled grenade fired by the Taliban brought down a NATO helicopter in another central Afghan province near Kabul, killing 30 U.S. troops and eight Afghans in the worst single incident for foreign forces in 10 years of war.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Parwan attack. Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Islamist group, said the assault began when a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at the gate of the compound.

He said five other bombers made it inside the compound, where he claimed U.S. officials were taking part in a meeting.

"Many people were killed, including Americans, but we still don't have the exact information," Mujahid said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The Taliban often exaggerate incidents involving Afghan government targets or foreign troops.

The twisted wreckage of what appeared to have been the car bomb lay outside the gate of the compound as Afghan police and soldiers swarmed around the scene.

Sharafuddin Rahimi, an adviser to the Parwan police chief, said a meeting involving the police chief, the governor "and some foreign advisers" was under way when the attack was launched but said the attackers did not reach the meeting room.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul confirmed several of its members were attending a shura, or meeting, in Salangi's office at the time of the attack but said none was injured.

Rahimi said one of the police chief's bodyguards was among those killed, as well as women and children.

"DESPICABLE"

Reuters Television pictures showed the bodies of some of those killed lying huddled behind what was left of their desks amid the debris of destroyed outer offices in the compound.

A concrete water tank inside the compound was filled with blood. Reuters pictures showed an unidentified Afghan policeman stomping on the head of one of the dead attackers.

In a statement from the presidential palace, Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the Parwan attack. ISAF, which provided air cover during the fight, also condemned the raid as "despicable."

Reuters Television showed Salangi talking on the phone as officials rushed anxiously around his office. In the middle of the raid, he told Afghan TV his forces were fighting back.

Insurgents, often from the Taliban, have launched a series of attacks against government targets over the past year, often in the east of the country near the porous border with Pakistan's largely lawless tribal lands.

Violence across Afghanistan in 2010 reached its worst levels since the Taliban were toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, and 2011 has followed a similar trend.

While foreign military casualties hit record levels last year -- and 2011 has been almost as bloody -- civilians continue to bear the brunt of the costly and increasingly unpopular war.

U.N. figures released last month showed that the first six months of 2011 had been the deadliest of the war for ordinary Afghans, with 1,462 killed, a rise of 15 percent on the same period last year. The same U.N. report blamed 80 percent of those civilian casualties on insurgents.

U.S. and other NATO commanders have claimed success in halting the momentum of a growing insurgency in the Taliban heartland in the south over the past year, although insurgents have hit back with strikes against targets in once relatively peaceful parts of the country.

A recent spike in violence also followed the beginning of a gradual process to hand security responsibility back to Afghans last month.

That process will end with the final foreign combat troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of 2014, although some U.S. lawmakers have questioned whether that timetable is not quick enough.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Haroon, Abdul Saboor and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Alex Richardson)

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At least 20 killed in suicide bombing in east Afghanistan (Reuters)

PULE ALAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide car bomber killed at least 20 people, and possibly as many as 35, in an attack at a hospital in a remote district of eastern Afghanistan on Saturday that damaged its maternity ward, officials said.

Estimates of the casualties, which included patients and medical staff, varied widely in chaotic scenes outside the hospital in the remote Azra district of eastern Logar province, which is just south of Kabul.

Dozens more were wounded in one of the worst attacks this year.

Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar provincial government, said as many as 35 people were killed, although Afghanistan's Interior Ministry put the death toll at 20.

"The exact target is still not clear," Interior minister deputy spokesman Najib Nikzad said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied responsibility and said the Islamist insurgents never attack hospitals.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack in which he said "tens of civilians" were killed. The United Nations said the maternity ward was hit in the bombing.

"This is a despicable attack against civilians who were seeking medical care, as well as visiting family members and health workers," Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. chief in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

Tensions have flared over civilian casualties, with insurgents and the Afghan government alike criticizing NATO-led forces for killing innocent Afghans while hunting for militants.

United Nations figures however show that insurgents are responsible for three-quarters of civilian deaths.

Military and civilian casualties hit record levels in 2010, the most violent year of the war since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.

This year is following a similar trend, with violence growing across Afghanistan since the Taliban announced a spring offensive at the beginning of May.

U.S. commanders had already said they expected a rise in attacks as insurgents hit back after U.S. and NATO forces made gains during operations in the Taliban heartland in the south over the past 18 months.

The United Nations said two weeks ago that May had been the deadliest month for civilians since it began compiling statistics four years ago.

It said it had documented 368 "conflict-related" civilian deaths, 82 percent of them caused by insurgents.

The latest violence comes as seven areas across the country prepare to take over security responsibilities from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) fighting an increasingly unpopular war that has dragged on for 10 years.

That will coincide with the start in July of a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops. U.S. and NATO troops plan to hand over security responsibility for all of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, although critics warn the handover date is premature.

While most of the ISAF gains have been in Taliban strongholds in the south, the insurgency in eastern provinces like Logar and Kunar near the border with Pakistan is much more fragmented.

Taliban fighters often slip across the border from safe havens in Pakistan's largely lawless northwest but other groups like the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network also operate extensively in the area.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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