Suicide bomber kills 17 in Afghan public bath
KANDAHAR: A suicide bomber killed 17 people, including a police commander, inside a public bathhouse in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar on Friday in the country’s worst attack in more than five months.
The bombing, which officials said wounded 21 people, was the bloodiest attack since July and comes after the end of the deadliest year in an increasingly unpopular war that has now dragged on for more than nine years,
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said three of its troops were killed in two separate attacks on Friday in the east and south of the country.
Zalmai Ayoubi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, said the target of the bathhouse raid, which took place in the town of Spin Boldak on the Pakistan border, was the border police commander.
“This brutal and inhumane act was the work of the enemies of Islam and humanity,” he said, adding that all the other casualties were civilians.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a statement condemning the attack as “un-Islamic”. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi by telephone from an undisclosed location said that his hardline group had carried out the attack.
The marketplace attack underscored the perilous security in parts of the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual home, despite being the focus of the US-led military strategy to reverse their momentum.
It was the deadliest bomb blast in Afghanistan since a northern provincial governor and 19 other people were killed at a mosque in Takhar on October 8.
“At around 12.00pm (0730 GMT) a suicide bomber blew up explosives strapped to his chest at a public bath in Spin Boldak,” border police official General Abdul Raziq said. Apart from the head of the rapid reaction border police unit, who was killed, and two policemen who were wounded, all the other casualties were civilians, Raziq said.
In a separate incident, criminal investigation police chief Farid Ahmad was killed in a drive-by shooting in Kandahar, the provincial capital, police said.
The local government confirmed from Kandahar that at least 17 people had been killed in the attack on the baths and that 23 people were wounded.
A doctor at the small cottage hospital in Spin Boldak said that 14 people were seriously wounded in the suicide attack.
“Three were in a critical condition and transferred to the military hospital in Kandahar,” he said. Shopkeeper Mujebullah, whose cousin was wounded, said the baths were in a crowded market and used by people to wash before attending the Friday prayers.
“The public baths were destroyed. Lots of dead bodies were picked out of the rubble at the beginning and afterwards,” he said. “Different people were killed in this explosion - old people, even children,” he added.
The Kandahar government released a statement saying the bomber had been targeting a police commander named Ramazan, who died in the attack. agencies
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