Dozens of civilians die in bloody day in Afghanistan

An Afghan man inspects a motorcycle used in a suicide attack in a parking lot holding dozens of trucks supplying the NATO-run Kandahar Air Base. A twin suicide bombing attack has killed 23 people in a car park crammed with vehicles supplying a major NATO base in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar. © AFP

KABUL - Up to 40 civilians were killed in a bloody day across Afghanistan on Wednesday as a twin suicide bombing laid waste to a crowded makeshift bazaar and a NATO air strike hit a home, Afghan officials said.

Twenty-three people were killed and 50 others were wounded in the suicide attack in a car park crammed with vehicles supplying the largest NATO base in southern Afghanistan, police said.

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck first and as a crowd gathered to help the victims a second bomber walked into their midst and set off explosives strapped to his body, Kandahar provincial police chief General Abdul Raziq told AFP.

“All casualties are civilians — not a single military person,” he said.

Map of Afghanistan locating Logar province. At least 15 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a NATO airstrike on a home in Afghanistan's Logar province, Afghan officials told AFP. © AFP/Graphics

Hours earlier, at least 15 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a NATO air strike on a home in Logar province south of Kabul, police said.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said “multiple insurgents” were killed in the air strike, which was ordered after troops came under fire.

But deputy provincial police chief Rais Khan Sadeq Abdulrahimzai told AFP: “18 civilians, including women and children, are dead,” adding that seven Taliban insurgents were also killed.

Provincial government spokesman Din Mohammad Darvish said “around 15 civilians are dead” after the attack in the early hours of Wednesday.

An AFP correspondent said he saw at least 15 bodies that had been loaded into five vehicles and driven by villagers to the provincial capital of Pol-i-Alam.

He said he saw the bodies of three women and four children, one as young as a year old and the oldest about 10 years old.

ISAF said in a statement a “precision” air strike was called in after coalition forces were fired on during an operation to detain a leader of the hardline Islamist Taliban insurgents.

“As a result of the operation, multiple insurgents were killed and the Afghan and coalition security force seized several weapons and a quantity of explosives,” ISAF said.

An ISAF spokesman told AFP later, after allegations of civilian deaths surfaced, that they were “assessing and gathering facts to try to determine what happened”.

Civilian casualties caused by NATO have roiled relations between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the United States, which leads NATO forces in the fight against the Taliban.

A little over a week ago, Karzai ordered an investigation after Afghan officials said a NATO air strike killed a family of eight, including six children, in eastern Afghanistan.

US soldiers carry wounded Afghans into their helicopter after a twin suicide attack in Kandahar. A twin suicide bombing attack has killed 23 people in a car park crammed with vehicles supplying a major NATO base in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar. © AFP

Two weeks before that, Karzai summoned ISAF commander General John Allen and US ambassador Ryan Crocker to the presidential palace after a number of civilians were killed in other NATO air strikes.

For the past five years the number of civilians killed in the war has risen steadily, reaching a record of 3,021 in 2011, with the vast majority caused by insurgents, the United Nations says.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s Kandahar suicide bombing, but similar attacks have been blamed on the Taliban.

The Kandahar Air Base is the largest NATO military base in southern Afghanistan, which has been a flashpoint for the insurgency over the past decade.

The Taliban have in the past threatened to kill truckers working for NATO, which relies on civilian vehicles to supply their bases across Afghanistan.

The lorries go through complex security checks that can take days, so that dozens of trucks often mass outside military bases before being allowed inside to offload their cargo, attracting makeshift bazaars as they wait.