KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — A rare rocket attack in the Afghan capital demolished two rooms of a mud-brick home and killed three teenage sisters, the family and police said.
The rocket attack this evening on the southern end of Kabul landed on a house adjacent to an Afghan police training center. The attack crushed a mud home and killed three sisters, ages 13, 15 and 16, said Sayed Farah Muz, the girls’ uncle.
“There are 40 countries in Afghanistan, and still we are hit by rockets. What is the benefit?” said Sayed Shah Barat, a cousin of the three girls. “The Iraqi people hit (President George W.) Bush with their shoes, but we should do the same with our leaders.” There are 41 nations involved in NATO’s security coalition in Afghanistan.
The house hit by the rocket was a simple six-room, mud-brick home that housed some 20 people, said Barat. Men swept up the shattered bricks of mud while women mourned out loud in another room.
Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, the head of criminal investigations for the Kabul police, said two rockets were fired into Kabul after nightfall Saturday.
Kabul once suffered greatly from rocket fire, during the country’s 1990’s civil war, but such attacks have been a rarity the last several years.
Police did not say who was believed responsible for the attack, though the rockets were likely fired from the western end of Kabul, Paktiawal said, near neighboring Wardak province, on Kabul’s western flank, which has seen an influx of militants over the last year.
Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber attacked a police checkpoint Saturday in southern Afghanistan, killing five three police and two civilians in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province, said local police chief Zamarai Khan. Four police and one civilian were wounded.
Many outlying districts of Kandahar province are teeming with Taliban militants, and Afghan police and the government have little control. The U.S. plans to send thousands of new soldiers to the region over the next six months.
Meanwhile, the U.S. coalition and Afghan forces killed six militants during a patrol in southern Afghanistan.
The U.S. coalition said Saturday that the combined forces were on a patrol in Helmand province Thursday when they spotted militants pulling out weapons from a hiding spot. The combined forces killed the militants and destroyed the weapons.
Violence has spiked across Afghanistan the last two years. More than 6,000 people have died so far this year in an insurgency related violence according to an Associated Press count of figures provided by Afghan and Western officials.
