Kabul: Coordinated explosions in a key
southern Afghan city killed 35 people and injured another 57,
a government spokesman said on Sunday.
Suicide bomb attacks and crude bomb blasts rocked
Kandahar city yesterday, causing widespread carnage and panic
in an assault later claimed by the militant Taliban, interior
ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashery said.
"A total of 35 people were killed -- 13 police
officers and 22 civilians," he told reporters, adding that the
57 injured included 40 civilians and 17 police officers.
He said the city had been hit by five suicide bomb
attacks and improvised bomb explosions at 2100 IST yesterday.
Kandahar's provincial governor Turyalai Wisa said
earlier that seven explosions had hit the city, in what
appears to be the biggest coordinated attack in Afghanistan
since the start of a Taliban insurgency in 2001.
He told reporters early today the casualty figure
could rise as rescue workers were still searching the rubble
for bodies.
A Taliban spokesman, named as Yousuf Ahmadi, said to a news agency
that the militants had carried out the attack at Kandahar's
main prison and targeted other government buildings around the
city.
Wisa said around 25 shops and up to seven houses near
the prison were destroyed in the blast. At least 10 people,
including women and children, attending a wedding celebration
in a nearby function hall were among the dead, Wisa said.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, March 14, 2010, 21:47