19 Killed in Attack in Afghanistan

13. November 2008, 15:20
By ADAM B. ELLICK and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA, The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan —

A day after a fierce suicide bombing in southern Afghanistan, Taliban fightrs struck an American military convoy in a crowded market in the eastern part of the country Thursday, and officials said one soldier and 18 civilians were killed.

One of the victims was a 12-year-old boy, who died when a suicide car bomber in a Toyota Corolla approached the convoy and then swerved into a weekly market around 8 a.m., according to American and Afghan accounts. Dr. Ajmal Pardes, the director of public health in the area, said 74 people were wounded.

The strike was in the Bati Kot district of eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province.

An Associated Press photographer said that an American military vehicle, two civilian vehicles and two rickshaws were destroyed.

Cmdr. Jeff Bender of the Navy, an American military spokesman in Kabul, said the civilian death count, initially put at 10, had risen to 18.

On Wednesday, a tanker truck packed with explosives detonated outside the provincial council office in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s largest southern city, killing the driver and at least six other people and wounding more than 40 others.

The blast shook the entire city, caused at least five houses to fall and left a crater near the council building, which housed an office of a national security service.

In a separate incident reported on Thursday, two soldiers from the American-led NATO alliance were killed in an explosion in the south of the country in an explosion on Wednesday, the alliance said, but did not specify the soldiers’ nationality.

The Defense Ministry in London later identified the two soldiers as members of Britain’s Royal Marines who were taking part in a joint patrol with Afghan soldiers in the Garmsir district of Southern Helmand Province.

The American contingent is the largest foreign force in Afghanistan, but Britain has about 8,000 troops there. A survey broadcast Thursday by the BBC said more than two-thirds of those questioned believed that Britain should withdraw its soldiers over the next year while less than a quarter favored their continued deployment.

Convoy attack kills US soldier, 8 Afghan civilians

13. November 2008, 15:16
By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan –

A suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. military convoy passing through a crowded livestock market in eastern Afghanistan Thursday, killing at least eight civilians and an American soldier and wounding 74 people, Afghan officials said.

The American patrol was hit in the Bati Kot district of Nangarhar province, said Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews, a U.S. military spokesman. The convoy was about 90 miles east of Kabul on the main road linking the capital to the Pakistan border at Torkham.

Hours after the attack, the charred and twisted remains of cars still smoldered on the tree-lined street.

No one took responsibility, but the attack bore the hallmarks of those conducted by Taliban militants, who regularly use suicide attackers and car bombs.

The bomber in Nangarhar struck the convoy near a crowded livestock market where people were trading sheep, cows, goats and other animals, said Ghafoor Khan, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

An Associated Press photographer said an American military vehicle, two civilian vehicles and two rickshaws were destroyed.

At least eight civilians were killed and 74 were wounded, Khan said. An American soldier was also killed, the U.S. military said.

The wounded civilians were transported to at least three hospitals in the provincial capital of Jalalabad, Khan said. American soldiers were sifting through the wreckage for clues.