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al-Qaida Blamed in Afghan Bus Explosion

Posted on: Wednesday, 13 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

A bomb ripped through a bus Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, killing 15 people, including six children. Officials blamed al-Qaida and remnants of the Taliban militia for the bombing, the deadliest in nearly a year.

The blast came as officials reported a large gunbattle in eastern Afghanistan between Afghan government forces and suspected Taliban fighters that killed at least 20 combatants.

Anti-government insurgents have been stepping up attacks in recent months, particularly in the south and east of the country, in a bid to destabilize the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

Wednesday's explosion appeared to have been caused by a bomb planted in the bus, which was carrying 20 people as it passed through Nadh Ali district in Helmand state on its daily route to the provincial capital Lashkargah.

Helmand deputy governor Haji Pir Mohammed blamed al-Qaida insurgents and Taliban fighters. "They are killing innocent people," Mohammed said.

It was the deadliest bombing since an explosion, also blamed on Taliban and al-Qaida killed 35 people in a Kabul market district in September 2002.

No one claimed responsibility for Wednesday's bombing, and there were no immediate reports of arrests.

"It was a powerful explosion. The bus was destroyed," a district administrator Ghulam Mahauddin said in a satellite telephone interview. "Six of the dead were children, eight were men and one was a woman."

Twenty people were on the bus in Helmand when the blast went off, Mahauddin said. The driver of the bus was among the wounded.

"Right now we don't think it was a suicide bomber or that it was a remote controlled devise," he said. "It seems that someone placed the bomb in the bus. Whoever did this is an enemy of Afghanistan."

Meanwhile, the gunbattle broke out when gunmen attacked government soldiers in Shinki, a village near the Pakistani border, said Khial Baz, an Afghan commander in Khost province.

A spokesman for the provincial governor in Khost said 15 suspected Taliban fighters were killed and five were wounded. He said five government soldiers died.

Baz said about 50 Afghan troops forced the attackers to retreat after several hours of fighting, and that soldiers captured one Pakistani fighter and one Arab fighter. Afghan soldiers also seized a cache of Kalashnikov assault rifles, telephone, radios and ammunition, he said.

Afghan authorities say Taliban remnants are reorganizing and that insurgents have also infiltrated the Afghan capital, Kabul, to carry out terrorist attacks.

In Kabul on Wednesday, two university students were killed and one was seriously wounded when a bomb they were making - apparently in preparation for a terrorist attack - went off by accident, police said.

On Monday, NATO took command of the 5,000-strong international peacekeeping force that patrols Kabul's crumbling streets.

A suicide bombing in eastern Kabul in June killed four German peacekeepers and wounded 29. In July, a suspected terrorist was killed when a homemade bomb he was planting in a dirt road exploded prematurely 9 miles east of Kabul.

Attackers late Tuesday fired two 107 mm rockets at a U.S. base in the eastern city of Asadabad, in Kunar province, the U.S. military said in a statement from Bagram Air Base, north of the capital.

The rockets fell harmlessly like scores of others have in the past, causing no damage or casualties.

In a separate incident on Wednesday morning, two laborers rebuilding a ruined house in southern Kabul were wounded when they set off a mine left over from years of war, said Ghulam Ghawis, a police official.

The mine, hidden at the base of a wall made of hardened mud, exploded when the workers tried to collapse the wall, Ghawis said.

Much of Afghanistan is littered with the debris of war. Unexploded ordnance and mines kill or maim over a 120 people in the country every month.

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Eds: AP correspondent Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

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