Daily Times

KANDAHAR: A Taliban suicide bomber killed five people and wounded dozens of others, mainly children, when he detonated a car filled with explosives at a police headquarters in southern Afghanistan Wednesday.

It was the insurgents’ first major attack since US President Donald Trump announced in Washington late Monday that he was committing American troops to the war-torn country indefinitely.

“A suicide bomber detonated an explosive-filled car in a parking lot near the main police headquarters in Lashkar Gah,” Omar Zhwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, told AFP.

“Our initial information shows that five civilians were killed and 25 were wounded, including women and children,” he added.

The car park was full of people queueing to get into the police headquarters when the explosion happened, said Zhwak.

He added that a nearby mosque, which was being used as a madrassa or Islamic religious school, had been been damaged. Children were studying there at the time.

Hospital staff gave a higher figure for wounded.

“We have received 38 wounded — mostly schoolchildren — and five dead, including two women and two soldiers,” Mauladad Tabihdad, director of hospitals in Helmand, told AFP.

Photos posted on Twitter by Afghan media outlets showed damaged Afghan military Humvee vehicles, including one apparently thrown into a drain by the force of the explosion.

“The car bomb targeted a number of army vehicles parked in the parking lot. We have reports of some casualties to army soldiers,” Salam Afghan, a police spokesman, told AFP.

The attack occurred a little over 24 hours after Trump cleared the way for thousands more US soldiers to be sent to Afghanistan, reversing earlier pledges to pull out.

The Taliban had called for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces and following Trump’s announcement vowed to make the war-weary country a “graveyard” for US forces.

The Taliban quickly claimed Wednesday’s attack in a text message sent to journalists. “We targeted army tanks, killing dozens,” it read.

Ordinary Afghans have paid a heavy price for the 16-year US-led war and analysts have warned that Trump’s renewed commitment could fuel the insurgency and lead to more casualties.

Published in Daily Times, August 24^th   2017.