Blast at Afghan-Pakistan border crossing kills six

By Saeed Ali Achakzai

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A bomb exploded at a
key border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan on
Tuesday, killing at least six Afghans, including a woman and
two boys, and wounding 16 other people, officials said.

The victims were civilians trying to enter Pakistan or
return to Afghanistan through the Spin Boldak border crossing
in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, Spin Boldak police
chief Abdul Wasay told Reuters.

Victims were treated in hospital in Spin Boldak and at
Chaman on the Pakistani side of the border. Staff said there
were three dead at each hospital — three men, a woman and two
boys.

The commander of Afghan border forces in the area, Abdul
Raziq Khan, said the bomb had been hidden in a water pot near a
transport office.

Kandahar Governor Assadullah Khalid called it “an act of
sabotage by the enemies of Afghanistan,” a term officials
commonly use to refer to Taliban guerrillas and their militant
Islamist allies.

More than 1,000 people, most of them militants but
including more than 50 U.S. soldiers, have been killed in
violence this year, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led forces
toppled the Taliban government in 2001.

The Taliban failed in their vow to derail September 18
elections but the period since has seen more violence.

The government said its troops killed 31 insurgents in
weekend fighting further east along the border with Pakistan,
but the Taliban said only three guerrillas were wounded, while
they killed 11 government troops.

In the southern province of Zabul, meanwhile, Afghan and
allied foreign forces arrested a district level Taliban
commander, Mullah Safar Mohammad, in Nobahar district on Monday
night, provincial spokesman Ali Khail said.

The Pakistani military also said it had killed up to 40
Islamist militants in clashes on the Pakistani side of the
border since last week, about half of them foreigners.

The latest surge in violence began last week in the North
Waziristan region and Pakistani military spokesman
Major-General Shaukat Sultan said seven government troops had
been killed.

While he could not say where the militants came from, he
said most foreign militants in that area were believed to be
from Central Asian countries and Afghanistan.

Pakistan launched a drive early last year to purge its
lawless tribal lands on the Afghan border of Islamist fighters
and hundreds of militants and Pakistani soldiers have been
killed since then.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Afghan in Kandahar, Sayed
Salahuddin in Kabul and Robert Birsel in Islamabad)