Blasts kill two Afghani policemen

Two suicide attackers detonated their bombs inside police headquarters, killing two policemen.

A wounded Afghan man walks out of the police headquarters after suicide attacks in Kandahar, south of Kabul, on Sunday. Two suicide attackers detonated their bombs inside the police headquarters in Afghanistan's second-largest city, killing two policemen and wounding 37 people, officials said.Show less

KANDAHAR // Two suicide attackers detonated their bombs inside the police headquarters in Afghanistan's second-largest city today, killing two policemen, officials said. The two bombers targeted Gen Abdul Raziq, a border police commander, two police officers at the scene in Kandahar said. Authorities scrambled to assess the damage with initial accounts saying eight people were dead. Police and a government spokesman later said two policemen were killed and nearly 40 people were wounded. Canadian troops and Afghan soldiers surrounded the police headquarters shortly after the explosions. The blasts occurred hours after a suicide bomber blew himself up in an attack on an Italian convoy in western Herat today, but there were no casualties. Police cordoned off the roads leading to the police headquarters.

The attack is the latest in worsening violence in recent months in Afghanistan where the al Qa'eda-backed Taliban have made a comeback. About 2,500 people, including 1,000 civilians, have been killed in fighting in the first six months this year, aid agencies say. Earlier, officials said that US-led soldiers, backed by air support, and Afghan police killed more than 20 Taliban fighters in two separate clashes.

A US military statement said its forces killed more than 10 insurgents during an operation in the southeast province of Khost yesterday, and did not mention any casualties on its side. In Helmand, a southern province also regarded as a Taliban stronghold, militants lost 10 men in an assault on a police post, the provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said. Four police were wounded defending their post.

The Taliban could not be reached immediately for comment about any of the incidents. Ousted from power in 2001 after refusing to surrender its al Qa'eda guests, the Taliban militia intensified a campaign in 2005 to drive out foreign forces and bring down the president Hamid Karzai's government. Suicide bombers and roadside bomb attacks, ambushes and kidnapping are the guerrillas' favoured tactics. Yesterday, the Taliban abducted four Afghan employees of a security firm in Maidan Wardak province, on the main motorway southwest of Kabul, a provincial official said.

*Reuters/AFP