1 UK soldier killed, 5 wounded in Kabul blasts
PLA Daily 2004-01-29
KABUL, Jan. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- At least one British peacekeeper was killed and three others injured in the Afghan capital on Wednesday when a bomb blast hit their patrolling vehicle on an eastern Kabul highway, witnesses here said.
Two civilians including the Afghan interpreter of the British soldiers were also wounded in the explosion, which occurred around11:00 a.m. (0630 GMT) in the snowy morning.
"I saw four soldiers lying on the road after their vehicle was destroyed in the sudden explosion," said Ahmad Rashid, a witness who was near the site when the blast happened.
The attack took place about one kilometer away from the camp of British troops of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Soldiers of the multi-nation peacekeeping force and Afghan police rushed to the site and cordoned off the area from distance.
Other witnesses said the blast might be a car bomb attack as they saw fragments of a civilian car were scattering around the site.
Wednesday's attack came just one day after a suicide bomber killed one and injured three Canadian peacekeepers with ISAF in a southern Kabul area on Tuesday. One Afghan civilian was also killed and nine others wounded in the attack near the Canadian military camp.
So far no one has claimed responsibility for the new attack while reports received here said that Afghanistan's ousted Taliban movement claimed the reasonability for the Tuesday attack.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports said that another explosion occurred on Wednesday morning in a northern Kabul area almost at the same time when the British patrolling team was under attack.
A spokesman of the Taliban earlier reportedly announced that about 60 suicide attacker had been sent by the movement to the capital city to make fatal attacks against foreign troops, referring to the 57,000-strong peacekeeping force which was under command by NATO since last August.
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