KABUL, (Reuters) – Three suicide bombers killed at least 28 people and wounded more than 70 today when they blew themselves up outside a hospital and within a busy city market in southwest Afghanistan.
The attack was one of the most deadly in the troubled country this year, and the worst in the normally peaceful Nimroz province since 2001. It comes during a surge in fighting ahead of a withdrawal by most Western combat troops and handover to Afghan forces to be completed by the end of 2014.
Eighteen civilians including several children and at least three members of the Afghan security forces were among the dead in the town of Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz province next to the border with Iran.
The toll is expected to rise, provincial governor Abdul Karim Barahawi told Reuters.
“The attackers blew themselves up in crowded markets to target civilians, there was no government installation nearby,” Barahawi said.
One bomber detonated his explosive vest in front of Nimroz hospital, while two others blew themselves up inside the city, killing mostly civilians, the president’s office said in a statement, saying
The markets targeted by the bombers had been packed with people buying food and supplies to end their daily Ramadan fast, police said.
Three police were among the 28 dead, Nimroz Police Chief Mohd Musa Rasooli said. As many as 100 wounded had been hospitalised, said local doctor Noor Ahmad Sherzad.
An Afghan policeman killed 11 colleagues in the same province on Saturday, opening fire on them at a checkpoint in Dilaram district, adding to a recent spate of such killings that have worried NATO commanders.
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry this week said the Taliban had not slowed attacks during Ramadan and security forces had stepped up security ahead of the Eid al-Fitr festival ending Islam’s holiest month.
Despite a decline in civilian casualties in the first half of this year compared to 2011, the United Nations last week said civilians were still bearing the brunt of fighting between insurgents and the foreign-Afghan coalition.
A spokesman for NATO-led forces said he had no details of the attack, but a local MP Sharifa Hamidi told Afghanistan’s Tolo Television that the attack was a “brutal act that cannot be justified”.
A half-yearly report by the United Nations last week said 1,145 civilians have been killed between Jan. 1 and June 30 this year as well as 1,954 wounded, representing a 15 percent decrease on last year due to a severe winter hampering fighting.
Homemade bombs and suicide attacks remain the biggest killers of Afghan civilians and Afghan and foreign troops.
Violence is at its worst despite the presence of thousands of foreign and Afghan troops fighting Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan plagued by three decades of conflict.
