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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
AFGHANISTAN: 19 killed in suicide attack in Helmand
KANDAHAR, 26 Sep 2006 (IRIN) - Some 19 people, including 13 civilians, were killed and another 20 were wounded when a suicide bomber on Tuesday blew himself up at a security post near a mosque in Lashkar Gah, capital of the restive southern Helmand province, local officials and hospital sources confirmed.
“Security forces had identified this man [the bomber] and as they tried to arrest him, he detonated himself near the police check post, killing 19 people, including a woman," Mohayedin Khan, a spokesman for the Helmand governor, said.
Many of the dead were ordinary Afghans, who had gathered in front of the mosque to register their names and go on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca later this year, Khan explained.
Two police and four national army soldiers were also killed in this attack, Khan told IRIN.
Irshad Sharifi, a doctor at the local emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah, which is funded by Italy, said that 11 of the wounded civilians were in critical condition.
The United Nations condemned the attack and said that it was directed against the people of Afghanistan, who had suffered nearly three decades of brutal civil war.
“Today’s suicide attack in Helmand was directed against the people of Afghanistan and it is so troubling that this happened during the holy month of Ramadan and many of the victims were preparing to go on Hajj,” Dan McNorton, public information officer for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN from Kabul.
Afghanistan has seen a spate of suicide and roadside attacks this year carried out by the Taliban militants who were toppled by US-led coalition forces in 2001, and are now waging a deadly insurgency against the Afghan government and foreign troops in the country.
On 28 August, a suicide blast in a market in Lashkar Gah city killed 17 people, many of them civilians.
Suicide bombings have caused 154 civilian deaths so far this year, the chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said on 18 September in Kabul.
According to NATO figures, released on 3 September in Kabul, more than 84 percent of the people killed by suicide bombers throughout Afghanistan this year were civilians.
Also on Tuesday, a remote-controlled bomb was denonated just south of the capital in an attack against an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) armoured personnel carrier, killing one Italian soldier and a child, and wounding five other Italian soldiers.
Rome has nearly 2,000 troops in Afghanistan as part if the 40,000-strong ISAF or coalition, to boost security and development and curb the growing Taliban insurgency.
However, deteriorating security in the south, southeast, and west, coupled with extreme poverty and unemployment and the existence of widespread corruption in government institutions, have resulted in growing dissatisfaction with the internationally backed government of President Hamid Karzai, analysts say.
SM/JL/DS
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2006
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