Suicide Attack Afghanistan 12 civilians Killed

KABUL: A suicide attack in a busy Afghan bazaar killed 12 civilians Thursday, while hundreds of people angrily protested against the reported deaths of scores of villagers in US-led strikes on insurgents.

The suicide blast, similar to the trademark tactics of Taliban militants, struck the southern province of Helmand after US Secretary of State Robert Gates toured the region to oversee preparations for troop reinforcements.

Police said two foreign soldiers in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force were also wounded in the blast in the district of Girishk. ISAF confirmed the suicide blast but not the casualties.

"A suicide attacker on motorcycle detonated his explosives as a foreign forces' convoy was passing through the centre of Girishk district," Helmand government spokesman Daud Ahmadi told French news agecny.

"Twelve of our innocent civilian compatriots were martyred and another 32 civilians, including two policemen, were wounded," he said.

The attack was targeted at a convoy of foreign troops travelling with Afghan forces, he said. Most of the foreign soldiers in Helmand are British.

The Taliban vowed last month to step up attacks on Afghan and foreign troops, who are braced for a tough year in efforts to defeat a growing tide of extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

District police chief Abdul Razeq said two foreign troops were wounded in Thursday's suicide attack.

"The blast took place in a crowded bazaar in the centre of the district, that is why it caused so many casualties," he said.

The Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, are particularly active in Helmand, where they are said to control several districts and have a hand in a flourishing opium production that funds the insurgency.

Gates, in Afghanistan for the first time since the United States rolled out a new strategy to reverse the flagging war, visited Helmand and the adjoining province of Kandahar on Thursday.

He met military commanders and inspected preparations for a beefed up mission in the south, Afghanistan's main battlefield, that will deploy about an extra 21,000 US soldiers.

Meanwhile, the US military was investigating allegations that dozens of civilians were killed in air strikes against insurgents in the southwest province of Farah overnight Monday-Tuesday.

Afghan police said more than 100 people -- about 70 of them civilians -- were killed in the strikes and ground fighting in Farah's Bala Buluk district, another bastion of insurgents and opium production.

The dead included children and the elderly, they said.

Hundreds of angry men denounced the raids on Thursday, chanting "Death to America" and demanding US soldiers be expelled, witnesses told the news agency.

"People are really angry and they shout 'death to America, death to the invaders,'" said a demonstrator who gave his name only as Abdullah.

Four people were wounded, one from shots apparently fired by police to disperse the crowd, and three when they were trampled, provincial health director Abdul Jabar Sahieq said.

This News published by www.apakistannews.com