Kabul, July 09: Twenty-one civilians and four police officers were killed Thursday in a car bombing in the central Afghan province of Logar, police said. “Twenty-one local civilians, including school students, and four of our police officers were killed in the blast,” said General Mustafa Andarabi, the provincial police chief.
The explosives, which were remotely detonated, were placed in a truck that had apparently been overturned purposely on a road in the village of Sheikhak in Mohammad Agha district.
“As the local people and police were trying to remove the vehicle from the road, the explosives which were hidden inside the vehicle were detonated by a remotely controlled device, causing a massive blast,” Andarabi said.
The attack, which took place about 30 kilometres south of Kabul, also injured four civilians, including three children, Andarabi said.
Several shops in the main market of Mohammad Agha district, where the blast took place, were destroyed and windows of houses were smashed as far as one kilometres away from the explosion site, a police official said.
Mohammad Asif Nang, a spokesman for the Afghan Education Ministry, said that several students from a nearby boys school were killed in the attack, but could not provide any figures or information about the ages of the students.
No group immediately took responsibility for the bombing.
Taliban militants, who were driven from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001, have waged a bloody insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government and its international military allies. They rely heavily on use of suicide and roadside attacks as part of their campaign.
–Agencies