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Blast at Afghan-Pakistan border crossing kills six

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 October 2005, 07:56 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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