/ 13 March 2008

Car bomb kills eights Afghans near Kabul airport

A suicide car bomber killed eight Afghan civilians in an attack on United States troops near the airport in Afghanistan’s capital on Thursday, a Nato spokesperson said.

Thirty-five civilians were wounded in the attack, but the four US soldiers inside the two vehicles targeted suffered only minor cuts and bruises.

The Taliban claimed responsibility.

”The foreign occupying forces and their Afghan slaves should get ready for the mujahideen’s suicide and guerrilla attacks this summer. This new year will be the bloodiest,” spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said by telephone from an unknown location.

The Taliban and Afghan government and foreign forces are gearing up for an escalation in fighting after a harsh winter.

The hardline Islamist movement have threatened to target the capital Kabul with more suicide bombings in their campaign to topple the pro-Western Afghan government and eject foreign troops.

Last year, the Taliban carried out about 140 suicide bombings across the country, but foreign forces have become better at avoiding casualties and most of those killed were Afghan civilians and members of the Afghan security forces.

In the south-western province of Nimroz, Afghan and US-led coalition forces killed 41 Taliban militants in a ground and air assault on Wednesday, the provincial governor said.

”The Taliban were travelling by car when the operation was launched. Forty-one Taliban were killed,” he told Reuters.

Nimroz, a sparsely populated desert area bordering Pakistan and Iran, has seen an increase in Taliban activity in recent months as fighters spill over from neighbouring Helmand province where mostly British forces are engaged in almost daily gunbattles with the insurgents.

A roadside bomb killed three Afghan police officers and wounded four more in Wardak province, just south-west of Kabul, on Thursday, a provincial intelligence official said. – Reuters