Explosion Injures Four GIs in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – An explosion near a U.S. military vehicle in southern Afghanistan on Monday wounded four American troops, a U.S. military spokesman said, the latest in a series of bloody assaults on coalition forces.

The vehicle was hit near the main southern city of Kandahar. A local Afghan police chief said the blast was a suicide attack, but American spokesman Col. James Yonts told reporters in Kabul that the cause was not immediately known.

Yonts said the four wounded, one in serious condition, were flown to a U.S. base in Kandahar for medical treatment.

Gen. Salim Khan, the deputy police chief for Kandahar, said a suicide bomber had rammed a car full of explosives into the U.S. vehicle, and that at least three American troops were killed.

“The U.S. vehicle was blown up in the suicide attack,” Khan said.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said he saw three American soldiers being carried on stretchers into a U.S. military helicopter. Two other U.S. helicopters were hovering overhead and several U.S. military vehicles also had arrived at the site.

Taliban-led rebels have stepped up attacks in an apparent effort to sabotage legislative elections due in September. Five American troops have died in attacks this month.

On June 1, a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber killed 20 people at the funeral of an anti-Taliban cleric in Kandahar, one of the worst terror attacks here since the Taliban was ousted in 2001.