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15th March, 2010
KABUL: Coordinated explosions in a key southern Afghan city killed 35 people and injured another 57, a government spokesman said Sunday.
Suicide bomb attacks and crude bomb blasts rocked Kandahar city late Saturday, 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 8 pm (1530 GMT) on Saturday.
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 Sunday the casualty figure could rise as rescue workers were still searching the rubble for bodies.
A Taliban spokesman, named as Yousuf Ahmadi, told AFP 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.
He said another explosion took place early Sunday close to the Kandahar office of a Japanese construction company, injuring five employees, including four Pakistanis and one Afghan. No other details were available.
In a phone call from an undisclosed destination, the Taliban’s spokesman said the attacks were in retaliation for comments by the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan that Kandahar would be targeted in military efforts to eradicate the Taliban.
“This was an answer to General (Stanley) McChrystal, who announced the Operation Omaid in Kandahar,” Ahmadi said, referring to the name of the battle plan.
“This was to sabotage the operation and to show we can strike anywhere, any time we want,” he said.
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