KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide bomber in an explosives-packed car followed and then struck a two-vehicle convoy carrying foreign police advisers south of Kabul on Friday, killing himself and wounding one adviser, police and NATO said. The bomber, whose charred body lay on the snow on the side of the main highway (ahhh...the Imagery)linking Kabul with Afghanistan's south, struck the vehicles in Logar province's Muhammad Agha district, said Gen. Muhammad Mustafa, the provincial police chief. One Afghan civilian was injured.One of the two armored vehicles caught fire while the other took the wounded foreign police adviser toward Gardez, the capital of the neighboring Paktia province before police arrived, Mustafa said. The latest violence comes a day after NATO said its forces have killed or wounded 130 insurgents who crossed from Pakistan accompanied with trucks filled with ammunition, in the biggest battle of the Afghan winter. Also Friday, NATO-led troops insisted that an airstrike in southern Afghanistan only killed suspected militants and not at least 13 civilians as alleged by Afghan police. Charges of civilian deaths and NATO's obligatory denial edited from this post.
Brig. Gen. James Terry, the deputy operations commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said a large engagement late Wednesday and early Thursday that left an estimated 130 Taliban fighters dead or wounded was one of the largest winter attacks the U.S. has seen.
Military intelligence warned of an impending attack Wednesday night in Paktika province, Terry said. Two groups of fighters - one about 125 strong and the other 60-80 strong - were observed for over two hours moving in military style formations from the Pakistan side of the border into Afghanistan before U.S. forces attacked. "The insurgent population coming across the border was well equipped" with AK-47s and machine guns, he said. "We got them defeated before they could actually conduct what we think were intended operations against Afghan and (NATO) security forces."