A roadside bomb tore through a crowded market in Afghanistan’s increasingly volatile north, killing three policemen and two civilians, a police official said yesterday.
Another 15 civilians were wounded in Thursday evening’s bombing in Kunduz Province’s Archi town. The blast went off as residents were shopping for food ahead of breaking the dawn-to-dusk fast observed during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but deputy provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Aqtash said civilians appear to have been the target.
“This was a cruel act of the enemy. There was nothing to link these people to the coalition or to politics,” Aqtash said.
Kunduz, about 240km north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, has not traditionally been a stronghold of the Taliban, who enjoy their greatest support among ethnic Pashtuns in the country’s southern and eastern provinces.
However, insurgents have been steadily building their presence there since about 2007, mostly among Pashtuns who are a minority in the area. Attacks on a key coalition supply line running south from Tajikistan are a constant menace, along with ambushes of German forces who help provide security.
In establishing a northern foothold, Afghan authorities believe the Taliban use veterans from southern battlefields to help organize local groups, sometimes with help from the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which provides recruits from among the Uzbek minority.
“The situation is very bad and dangerous in Kunduz, but unfortunately the security officials keep saying things are all right,” Mabubullah Mabub, chairman of the Kunduz provincial council, said on Thursday. “Over the last two years, the situation has been getting worse.”
Another report on Thursday said Taliban fighters overran a police post in Kunduz City, the provincial capital.
“Taliban attacked a police post and killed eight policemen. There were nine people in the post, one of them survived though he was injured,” Kunduz Governor Mohammad Omar said.
Residents say some areas of Kunduz have come under Taliban control, and describe recruitment drives that exploit high unemployment and disillusionment with a largely corrupt state security apparatus.
In the southern province of Uruzgan about two dozen militants and three other police officers were killed during an Afghan government operation that is now in its third day, a police commander said.
NATO and the US have 141,000 troops in the country, set to peak at 150,000 in coming weeks as efforts to quell the insurgency escalate, especially in the south.
Most deployments under a 30,000-strong troop surge ordered by US President Barack Obama are heading to Kandahar and Helmand provinces in the south, though others are being sent north to reinforce small bases run by NATO allies.
Afghan forces and their US-led military backers have intensified a push to secure volatile regions in recent weeks ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for Sept. 18.
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