[An Nahar] A jacket wallah on a bicycle struck Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday, killing four Afghans in one of the country's safest cities poised to transition from NATO...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization....
to local control.
The attack will likely fuel fears that putting Afghan cops in control of seven different areas this week is happening too quickly, with violence at a record high in the decade-long Taliban insurgency.
Police and ministry officials said 11 people were maimed in the kaboom close to the northern city's famous Blue Mosque.
"He was a suicide kaboomer," said interior ministry front man Siddiq Siddiqi, who gave the toll and said all the casualties were civilians.
Bicycle parts were scattered across the ground, which was covered in glass shards and spatters of blood.
Ahmad Tamim, a teenage bread seller, said he was carting his wares along the street when the bomb went off. Shrapnel from the blast injured his cheek.
"There was suddenly a big kaboom. I was thrown back," he said. "I saw thick smoke rising from the bomb site and the car windscreens around were all shattered. Then police took me to hospital," he said.
A police front man for Balkh province, of which Mazar is the capital, said the transition ceremony would go ahead this weekend but conceded to harboring fears over bad turban activity in other parts of the province.
"The enemy have stepped up its efforts to create chaos and disrupt the transition of security," said front man Shir Jan Durani, assuring the media that the police were fully in charge.
"We are, however, concerned about the security of some volatile districts in the province as there are not sufficient number of security forces to foil any major attempt by the enemy," he admitted, urging the national ministries and NATO to provide more equipment for decampedgling forces.
He played down Wednesday's attack as an "accident", saying the explosives had detonated prematurely when the bicycle collided with a car.
Transition comes with U.S. and Afghan officials trying to reach out to the Taliban to broker a peace deal as NATO-led troops begin a gradual withdrawal designed to recall all foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
Meanwhile,
...back at the Senate, Odius Sepulcher called for war against the Visigoths...
in the volatile south, the focus of a U.S. military "surge" last year to reverse Taliban momentum, NATO troops held a ceremony to transfer Lashkar Gar, the capital of Helmand
...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan...
province, to local control.
The Afghan defense minister and the head of the transition authority Ashraf Ghani led bigwigs attending the ceremony at government house in Lashkar Gar, where mostly British troops are based.
Ghani claimed it was a sign of progress that Afghan forces were now able to assume responsibility in what is one of the provinces worst-hit by gun-hung tough guys and narcos.
"We're very happy," added Helmand governor Gulab Mangal. "It's like an Eid day festival," he said, referring to a Mohammedan holiday.
In the neighboring province of Kandahar -- birthplace of the Taliban and the scene of last week's shock liquidation of the Afghan president's brother -- a gunbattle killed three coppers and two bad turbans.
The Taliban also accused the United States of hacking their mobile phones after a text message purportedly from one of the cut-thoats' spokesmen said their reclusive leader Mullah Omar was dead.
Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that Omar was alive and that the text message and an email also seemingly from the Taliban saying he had died from a heart condition were false.
The reclusive Omar has not appeared in public since 2001.