Kandahar, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber on a motorized rickshaw detonated explosives Monday in a marketplace in southern Afghanistan, killing 28 people in one of the deadliest bombings since the fall of the Taliban. Children selling chewing gum and cigarettes were among the victims of the blast.
The attacker apparently was targeting a police commander when he detonated his bomb near a taxi stand in Gereshk in Helmand province, the world’s largest poppy-growing region and site of the country’s worst violence this year.
Gereshk district chief Abdul Manaf Khan said 13 police and 15 civilians were killed. The provincial chief of public health, Enayatullah Ghafari, said the hospital recorded 26 deaths and 60 wounded, though he said some of the dead probably weren’t brought to the hospital and the death toll was likely higher.
NATO said 13 people were taken to a NATO-Afghan base for treatment and 45 people to the Gereshk hospital.
Taliban militants have set off a record number of suicide blasts this year – more than 100 through the end of August – but few were as deadly as the Helmand attack. The Taliban typically aims its attacks at international and Afghan military and police forces.
Meanwhile, 10 of 13 employees for a U.N.-funded land mine-clearing agency who were kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan last week were released Monday, said Paktia provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai. The three remaining captives were expected to be released soon, Alizai said.
Elsewhere, militants ambushed and killed four police officers from the northwest province of Faryab who were traveling to neighboring Badghis province to help repel an attack on a government center, said Faryab provincial police chief Gen. Khalil Zayia.
