12 Killed in Attacks Across Afghanistan

Posted August 7th, 2012 at 12:20 pm (UTC-5)
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At least 12 people have been killed in a series of attacks across Afghanistan, on Tuesday, including nine who died in a roadside bombing near the capital.

Afghan officials say a remote-controlled blast hit a bus traveling across a bridge west of Kabul. Local police say they have arrested a suspect in the bombing, which wounded five people.

In another incident, authorities said a bomber detonated a truck full of explosives outside a NATO base in Pul-i-Alam, the capital of Logar province. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast, which wounded at least 11 civilians.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said terrorists who target innocent civilians during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan are neither Muslims nor Afghans, and that they will “achieve nothing but public abhorrence.”

The NATO coalition also condemned the attacks, as examples of the “insurgency's destructive, vicious disregard for the Afghan people.”

Later Tuesday, the coalition said two gunmen wearing Afghan National Army uniforms opened fire on NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan, killing one person. So far this year, there have been at least 25 so-called “green-on-blue” attacks in which foreign troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers or insurgents disguised in their uniforms. The coalition did not reveal the service member's nationality.

France said one of its soldiers was killed and another wounded in a firefight with insurgents in Kapisa province. Since 2001, 88 French soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.

And, police said insurgents detonated a bomb strapped to a donkey in the central Ghor province, on Tuesday, killing a district police chief and wounding three others. Local officials blamed the Taliban for the attack.

In another development, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen appointed Maurits Jochems as NATO's next senior civilian representative to Afghanistan. Jochems will succeed Simon Gass, who will return to Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office after serving as representative for 18 months.