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| Afghanistan |
| Afghan suicide bombing kills 40 at wedding |
| 2010-06-10 |
| At least 40 people were killed and more than 70 wounded when a suicide bomber Wednesday night struck a wedding celebration in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar attended by policemen and anti-Taliban militiamen, government officials said. The groom —at whose house in the Nagahan village the explosion occurred—was a member of the local anti-Taliban militia that U.S. Special Forces helped establish in the area in recent months, according to the local tribal chief. While the groom, who was badly injured, survived. The dead included several other members of the militia and Afghan police officers, officials said. "I was in the hospital until late last night and the doctors had retrieved some metal parts from the bodies of victims, small metal balls usually used in suicide vests," said the governor of Kandahar province, Tooryalai Wesa, who hails from the same Arghandab district where Nagahan is located. The fatalities included 14 children, he added. Hajji Pehalawan, a tribal leader in Nagahan, put the overall death toll at 80. Mr. Pehalawan, the former Arghandab district assembly chief, and some other Nagahan-area tribal leaders are locked in a long-running dispute with the district governor, Hajji Abdul Jabbar, and other prominent Arghandab leaders who oppose the existence of the local militia. The Nagahan militia is not recognized by the Afghan government. The bride's celebration, in a separate house, was not attacked. Most Afghan weddings are segregated by gender. While the U.S. Embassy has condemned the bombing, pledging that "America will continue to stand with the Afghan people against the scourge of terrorism," Afghan government officials have not explicitly blamed the Taliban for the killings. The Taliban, meanwhile, accused the U.S.-led coalition of setting off the explosion in Nagahan, citing past incidents of international troops mistakenly striking Afghan weddings. "The occupying forces are trying to terrorize our people," the Taliban statement said. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #1 So what happened? Did they let their guard down? Trust someone who shouldn't have been trusted? Since the CIA station thing, it just seems like special precautions need to be taken by assembled groups of people who don't consider the taliban friends... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2010-06-10 09:07 |