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Suicide attack in Kabul kills one Afghan, injures three US soldiers
 A suicide bomb exploded near an international military convoy here on Tuesday, killing an Afghan truck driver and wounding several people including three US soldiers, police said, as the Afghan government announced that trading Taliban prisoners for the kidnapped South Koreans was unacceptable because it would encourage kidnapping.The car bomb exploded as a convoy was passing near a US-run military base, Camp Phoenix, which is focused on training the fledgling Afghan national army. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast in an SMS from the telephone of a known spokesman for the group. One person was killed and four injured, three of them Americans, policeman Sayed Omar Sadat told an AFP photographer at the scene. The dead man was a truck driver who had been passing by, he said. The blast struck a convoy of the US-led coalition, the force said in a statement. It said three coalition soldiers were wounded but did not give their nationality. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said seven Afghan passers by were wounded in the blast. Meanwhile, Humayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, told reporters that, I think as a principle we shouldnt encourage kidnapping by accepting their demands. This followed the Taliban killing a second hostage late Monday and announcing that they would kill more if no Taliban prisoners were released by noon Wednesday. If the government continues to respond positively to their request and to the demands of the terrorists, well face more problems, Hamidzada said. Also on Tuesday, Afghan authorities recovered the body of the second South Korean killed by the Taliban from a clover field beside a road in Arzoo, a village 10-kilometres southeast of Ghazni. The victim was identified as Shim Sung-min, 29, a former employee of an IT firm who did volunteer work to help the poor. Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said Afghan negotiators had not contacted the Taliban since the second hostage was killed, adding that the insurgents suspected the Afghan government and foreign troops were intending to launch a rescue operation. Any attempt to rescue the hostages by force would put the Koreans lives at risk, he warned. Negotiations had reached a deadlock with Afghan authorities demanding the release of the 18 women before any prisoners were freed and the kidnappers insisting its fighters should be let out of jail first, according to a Western security analyst. Yousuf said Shim was killed because Afghan authorities were ignoring the Talibans demands. Separately, gunmen in the southern province of Kandahar abducted five Health Ministry officials, including three doctors, on Sunday, a provincial police chief said on Tuesday. Posted by: Fred 2007-08-01 |
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