(KUNA) -- Afghan officials claimed they had arrested 11 Taliban from different provinces who were allegedly planning to target Afghan police, army and the foreign troops in suicide attacks. The 11 detainees, captured in the central capital Kabul and Kandahar, Helmand and Maidan Wardak province, also included three Pakistani citizens, said officials of the Afghan Interior Ministry on Wednesday.General Abdul Manan Farahi, head of the counter-terrorism department of the Interior Ministry, told a news conference explosives and other material had also been recovered from the detainees. The explosives resembled those which was captured by the Afghan authorities last year, said Farahi, who would not give more details about the type, nature and the country from where the explosives were supplied. He said some of the explosives were fitted in suicide jackets which were also found with the suspects.
Asked who were responsible for giving the detonating material to terrorists, the official said explosives were being smuggled into Afghanistan from the neighbouring country "but we did not know at the moment which country is involved." He said two of the detained Pakistanis among the 11 suspects were assigned to assassinate governor of Afghanistan's Helmand province and the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) stationed there.
In recent months, suicide attacks in Pakistan have also been mounted. In one such suicide attack, a former two times Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed along with some 20 workers of her party. Earlier, two Pakistani ministers escaped separate suicide attacks in NWFP, the Pakistani province bordering Afghanistan. In the same token, six Afghan parliamentarians were among the nearly 60 people killed in a suicide attack in Samangan province of Afghanistan some three months back.