Foreign Correspondence

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Afghan bombing kills 21, including US soldier
By RAHIM FAIEZ - AP
Nov. 13, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber targeting a passing U.S. military convoy blew up his car near a crowded
market in eastern Afghanistan Thursday, killing at least 21 people, including an American soldier, officials said.

The explosion also wounded 74 people near the market where people were trading sheep cows, goats
and other animals in the Bati Kot district outside Jalalabad, Afghan police and health officials said.

An American military vehicle, two other vehicles and a couple of rickshaws were destroyed in the blast.


Atifa Bibi, an Afghan school girl, recovers in a hospital after two men on a motor-
bike threw acid on her in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008.

Two men on a motorbike threw acid on six Afghan girls walking to school in Kandahar on Wednesday, hospitalizing
two of the girls with serious burns, said Dr. Sharifa Siddiqi. Four others were treated and released.

Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews, a U.S. military spokesman, said at least 20 civilians and a U.S.
soldier were killed. The soldier's death brings the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan to
at least 148, the highest number of troop deaths per year since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

There were 111 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan in the whole of 2007.

Taliban militants regularly use suicide attackers and car bombs in their
assaults against U.S., Afghan and other foreign troops in the country.

More than 5,400 people, of whom nearly 1,000 civilians, have died in insurgency
related violence this year, according to a tally compiled by the Associated
Press based on figures provided by Afghan and international officials.

On Wednesday, a suicide bomber driving a tanker truck hauling oil detonated his
explosives outside an Afghan government office during a provincial council meeting
in the southern city of Kandahar, killing six people and wounded 42, officials said.

The blast in the Taliban's former stronghold came as the provincial council
was hearing constituent complaints. Two members of the provincial council
were wounded in the attack, said Kandahar's Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi.

The explosion ripped through the council office, flattened five nearby homes and damaged
the offices of the country's intelligence service. It left a crater some 15 feet into the ground.

Raufi blamed Taliban militants for the attack.

Associated Press writer Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul contributed to this report.

http://www.heraldonline.com/wire/world/story/954416.html