KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber and gunmen attacked a drug-eradication team in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people and injuring more than 40 others, authorities said.
Twelve police officers were among the dead in the assault, the latest in a string of attacks by militants against government teams responsible for destroying the lucrative opium poppy crop during the planting season. The insurgency is fueled with drug profits.
The seven other people killed were civilians, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The attack was carefully coordinated, with insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades and raking the area with gunfire immediately after the explosion.
Injured were two Australian journalists, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. said.
The attack took place in Nangarhar province, outside the provincial capital of Jalalabad. Together with the south, Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, is a major center of poppy cultivation. Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world’s opium.
“This event proves that . . . cultivation and production of narcotics in Afghanistan are inseparably tied to terrorist forces,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The attack came on the day U.S. Marines in the south began their first major offensive, seeking to seize the town of Garmser in southern Helmand province, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force reported that one of its soldiers had been killed in Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan. The soldier’s nationality was not specified.
The Marines in the south encountered little significant resistance as they secured roads leading to Garmser, said a spokeswoman, Capt. Kelly Frushour. She gave no estimate of how long it might take to secure the town.
The Marines were sent to bolster British, Dutch and Canadian forces that have been struggling to contain the insurgency in the south, the Taliban’s former heartland.
Elsewhere, Afghanistan’s chief of intelligence acknowledged to lawmakers that the security services had received a warning about a weekend assassination attempt against President Hamid Karzai.
Even before the disclosure, the intelligence and security services had been under heavy criticism for failing to prevent the attack.
In a display of anger and displeasure, lawmakers passed no-confidence motions against the intelligence official, Amrullah Saleh, together with the defense and interior ministers, but it did not immediately appear that the three would be ousted from their jobs.
