Five NATO troops died in roadside bombings in Afghanistan as international forces announced they foiled a terrorist attack on an upcoming conference in Kabul to be attended by leaders from more than 60 nations as well as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
A suicide bomber detonated explosives that killed four civilians in a crowded part of Kabul yesterday, security sources said. The bombing happened opposite a clinic on a road often used by foreign forces, one source said.
The deaths added to a summer of escalating violence as Afghan and coalition forces step up patrols in the Taliban-dominated south in a push to wrest control of the traditional insurgent stronghold.
PHOTO: AFP
Security has been tightened across the capital for tomorrow’s conference, which is attracting the heads of NATO and top diplomats, including US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In May, Taliban fighters had a gunbattle with security forces and militants launched a rocket that landed about 100m from the site of a national peace conference in the capital. Twenty-three civilians, but no conference delegates, were wounded.
Acting on intelligence, a combined international and Afghan commando force captured a Taliban bomb-making expert on Friday night in Kabul, NATO said.
Neither Afghan nor NATO officials would identify the suspect, give details of the plot, or say how advanced the planning was. But the Afghan Ministry of Defense said several “enemies of the people” were killed in the raid and 26 suspected insurgents were arrested.
The ministry said a special Afghan army commando unit based with US Special Forces outside Kabul carried out the raid in the southwestern district of Wasel Abad of Kabul.
Elsewhere, three international troops were killed by homemade bombs on Saturday, including an American in eastern Afghanistan and a British soldier in the south, NATO and Britain’s Ministry of Defence said. A third service member died on Saturday in the south, but NATO did not disclose the nationality or any details.
Two others — a British marine and an US service member — died in an explosion Friday in the south, the alliance and the UK government said.
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