Kabul, May 31: Taliban suicide bombers blew up two vehicles in the western city of Herat on Monday, killing at least five Afghans, displaying the militants ‘ reach into an area considered secure enough to revert soon to government control from Nato. Also Monday, four Nato soldiers were killed in other parts of the country.
In the first blast in Herat, a suicide attacker blew up an explosives-packed car at the gates of an Italian military base in Herat. Five Italian soldiers were wounded, one of them gravely, Italian defence minister Ignazio La Russa said.
A second explosion ripped through a bus stop at a busy downtown intersection in the normally peaceful western city, and at least one other explosion was heard nearby the Italian base, officials said. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the two attacks in a phone call.
Herat, western Afghanistan’s largest city, is one of seven areas scheduled to be handed over to Afghan control in July as the first step toward transitioning nationwide security responsibility from international forces to Afghan troops by 2014. Attacks are rare inside the city, though there are a number of violence-prone districts on its outskirts.
Attacks around Afghanistan have been increasing since the Taliban announced its spring offensive, with strikes on Kabul, the main southern city of Kandahar and in the north. Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said last week that plans to hand over control of seven areas to Afghan soldiers in July remain on course, despite new insurgent attacks.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi offered his “encouragement” to all Italian soldiers following the Monday’s attack, but a prominent member of Berlusconi’s Freedom Party, Margherita Bonniver, said the Herat attack should speed efforts to negotiate a pullout.
“A political solution will have to be effective to permit the international contingent to make an agreed upon withdrawal in the briefest time possible ,” Bonniver said. An Afghan policeman and four civilians were killed in the explosions in Herat.
–Agencies