Suicide Bombs Kill 18 in Afghanistan
    By Carlotta Gall and Abdul Waheed Wafa
    The New York Times

    Monday 18 September 2006

    Kabul, Afghanistan - Afghanistan was hit by three devastating suicide bomb attacks today, killing 18 people and wounding more than 60, many of them children, in one of the country's worst days of violence against civilians.

    Four Canadian soldiers were killed in one explosion when a suicide bomber on a bicycle set off a bomb as the soldiers were handing out gifts to children in a village in southern Afghanistan. Eleven other soldiers were wounded as well as 27 villagers, many of them children, local government officials said.

    The bombing was the southern village of Char Kota, in Pashmul, one of the areas that NATO troops had only just wrested from the control of Taliban fighters after two weeks of heavy fighting. The NATO commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Richards, declared victory in the area Sunday, saying that NATO had taken control of the area and forced out the remaining Taliban fighters.

    NATO confirmed that four soldiers from its International Security Assistance Force were killed and several injured but did not confirm their nationality. NATO said they were on patrol in a village and talking to children when the bomber approached on his bicycle.

    "This action was as much an attack on the Afghan people as an attack on'' the military force, General Richards said in a statement issued in Kabul. "This patrol was arranging the requirement for aid, reconstruction and development in the Zhare and Panjwai area. It is beyond comprehension that a suicide bomber should choose this time to attack, knowing that he could kill innocent children," his statement said.

    Another suicide bomber struck in the western town of Herat, killing 11 people and wounding 18, and a third blew up his car in Kabul, killing 3 policemen and wounding 9 other people.

    A Taliban spokesman, reached by telephone, claimed responsibility for the attack in southern Afghanistan, naming the bomber as a man from the southern city of Kandahar.

    The attacks came a day after President Hamid Karzai left to attend the United Nations General Assembly and then to make state visits to Canada and Washington. Mr. Karzai is hoping to win more support for his beleaguered country as violence escalates, and in particular to ask President Bush to bring more pressure on neighboring Pakistan to help prevent the violence. The Afghan government says that Pakistan provides refuge to the Taliban insurgents across the border.

    The attack in Herat came at 7 p.m. as townspeople were leaving the main town mosque, the Masjir-e-Jame, after evening prayers, said a spokesman for the provincial governor, saying that he would only speak on the condition of anonymity. Most of those killed were young men, he said, and the wounded included a 4-year-old boy.

    While the first spokesman said he could not confirm that it was a suicide bombing, another city official said it was a suicide bomber on a bicycle, The Associated Press reported.

    In Kabul a suicide bomber blew up his car as the police approached a suspicious-looking vehicle on the main road leading east out of the city, said an Interior Ministry spokesman, Zemarai Bashari. Three policemen were killed and one was wounded, said Ali Shah Paktiawal, director of the crime unit for the Kabul police. Eight civilian passers-by were wounded, and a civilian truck was damaged.

    The three aparent bombings in one day were a clear escalation in insurgent tactics, possibly linked to Mr. Karzai's visit to the United States and to NATO claims of success on the battlefield. Suicide bombings have caused 154 civilian deaths so far this year, the chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said this morning before news of the day's carnage emerged.

    Mr. Koenigs later denounced the suicide bombing in Kandahar Province. "This attack amounts to a serious violation of international humanitarian law,'' he said in a statement released in Kabul. "It should be treated as a crime against humanity."

    Mr Koenigs also appealed to foreign countries for more troops, aid and support for Afghanistan.

    "Afghanistan needs more international support,'' he said in a news briefing in Kabul when he released the bombing statistics. "These are difficult times for Afghanistan."

    "We are making real and sustained progress in Afghanistan in spite of the problems in the south,'' he said. "If we want to succeed in Afghanistan the answer is clear: Afghanistan needs more sustained support from the international community and not less."

    He called on NATO countries to rise to the challenge and provide more troops, and he called for more development and political support through diplomacy to help Afghanistan resolve its problems with Pakistan.

    "It is obvious that any solution for the south, which is sustainable, can only be a regional solution between Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said.

    Thirty-five detainees who had been held by American forces in their prison at the United States air base in Bagram were released today. The men, ages 20 to 60, came mostly from southern and southeastern parts of the coluntry. After their release, some of the men said that they had been held for up to 27 months without charge.

    Abdul Ahad, 60, said he had been arrested at his home in a mountainous part of Kandahar Province 10 months ago. "Afghan soldiers took me from my home, and I was asked why I prepared food for the Taliban," he said.

    Fazir Ahmad, 20, said he was arrested on his way home from Pakistan and held for 20 months, accused of working for the Taliban.