A suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up in a government building on the southern outskirts of the city of Kandahar on Monday, killing at least eight people, including five police officers and three civilians, and wounding six others, officials said.
The attack took place a few minutes before noon on the second floor of the building, in an area where Afghan identification cards are issued, said Gen. Ghulam Ali Wahdat, the regional head of police. The district police chief was among the wounded, he said.
Afghan police officers are frequently the target of Taliban attacks from roadside and suicide bombs: A roadside bomb exploded Monday in the eastern Afghan province of Paktia, which borders Pakistan, destroying a police vehicle and killing three policemen, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
But the attack in the government building, which houses civilian registration offices, a police headquarters and a court appeared particularly brazen.
Taliban attacks have spiked the last three years, as militants have taken control of wide swaths of countryside. President Obama is sending 21,000 more troops to bolster the 38,000 American soldiers already in the country. In total, NATO and the United States have 70,000 troops in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s police force, which gets less training and equipment than the army, is seen as a weak link in the country’s security structure. Police officers have suffered the brunt of militant attacks, and hundreds have died in bombings and ambushes over the last year.
The need to better train and equip the Afghan security forces was one of the key elements of the strategic review of American policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan announced by President Obama last week.
Source: NYT
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