Suicide bomber kills in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -January 31, 2008 The bomber struck while people were praying inside the mosque in
the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, provincial police chief
Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said.
Helmand's deputy governor, Pir Mohammad, was killed in the
blast, said Nisar Ahmad, a provincial health official.
The blast killed five other people and wounded 11, Ahmad said.
Taliban regularly attack Afghan officials as part of their
attempts to weaken the control of U.S.-backed President Hamid
Karzai's government.
Helmand, the center of the world's opium and heroin production,
is focus of intense clashes between militants and British, American
and Afghan government forces.
The mosque blast happened hours after another suicide bomber in
a car targeted an Afghan army bus in Kabul, killing one civilian
and wounding four other people, officials said.
The blast shattered the bus windows and badly damaged a passing
taxi in Kabul's Taimani neighborhood, said police officer Jan Agha.
A soldier was among the wounded.
A series of attacks last year targeted buses carrying Afghan
security forces, a key element of U.S. efforts to beat back the
insurgency gripping the country's south and east.
In September a suicide bomber blew himself up in an army bus in
Kabul, killing 28 soldiers and two civilians. In June a bomb ripped
through a bus carrying police instructors in Kabul, killing 35
people.
Last year was Afghanistan's most deadly since the ouster of the
Taliban in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001. More than 6,500 people -
mostly insurgents - died in the violence, according to an
Associated Press count of figures provided by local and
international officials.
In eastern Nuristan province, militants beheaded four road
construction workers and dumped their bodies on the side of the
road Wednesday, said deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Daoud
Nadim.
The four were kidnapped 10 days ago while working on a road
project in Kamdesh district, Nadim said.
In Kabul, hundreds of people demanded the release of an Afghan
journalist who was sentenced to death last week after he was found
guilty of insulting Islam.
The demonstrators from the small, secular Solidarity Party
rallied in front of the United Nations office in support of 23-year
old Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, who was sentenced by a three-judge
panel in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif for distributing to
journalism students a report he had printed off the Internet.
The article asked why Islam permitted men to have four wives but
women could not have multiple husbands.
Kaambakhsh has appealed his conviction.
International human rights groups have condemned the sentence
but Afghanistan's upper house of parliament welcomed the ruling and
criticized "international interference" in the matter.
--
Associated press reporters Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez in Kabul
contributed to this report.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)