KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A bomb strapped to a parked bicycle exploded near a construction office in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing one employee and a child about 11 years old, police said.
Meanwhile, five police officers died when a police vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Kandahar province’s Shorawak district, said Gen. Saifulah Hakim, a border-police commander. He said two officers also were wounded in the explosion.
It was unclear whether the construction company was the target of the bicycle-bomb attack in Kandahar city.
Such attacks are common in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban insurgency has regained control of large areas in the past three years after having been routed from control of the country in 2001.
Many of the 21,000 additional U.S. troops streaming into Afghanistan as part of an effort to turn back the Taliban resurgence are being stationed in the country’s volatile southern provinces.
Meanwhile, a top military officer told Congress on Thursday that U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan need more precision weapons systems to better avoid unintended civilian deaths.
The warning from U.S. Special Operations Command leader Adm. Eric Olson came as the Pentagon’s top military officer revealed that he does not believe discipline is warranted in the recent U.S. bombing in Afghanistan that killed dozens of Afghan citizens.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday acknowledged that the accidental killing of civilians in Afghanistan has become one of the military’s greatest strategic problems in the faltering war.
Pentagon officials are preparing to release their investigation into the May 4 bombing that was aimed at Taliban militants but also killed civilians. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told a Pentagon news conference Thursday that he has seen nothing in the investigation that would call for disciplinary action against the U.S. forces involved.
Mullen added that the complex, seven-to-eight hour fight that stretched until dark, revealed chain-of-command gaps and some training shortcomings that military leaders plan to address. At the same time, he said he is satisfied that U.S. forces in the battle were sufficiently sure of their targets and believed civilians would not be hurt when they fired.
