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Two suspected Taliban bombers die in blast
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-30 09:32
Two suspected Taliban suicide bombers died Thursday when explosives they were
strapping to their bodies exploded prematurely in southern Afghanistan,
officials said.
The blast follows a string of suicide attacks and comes days after a top
rebel commander claimed that more than 200 insurgents were willing to kill
themselves in assaults on U.S. forces and their allies.
Militants also used a roadside bomb to wound two U.S. troops driving in a
desert in southern Helmand province Thursday, a military statement said. A
purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammed Yousaf, claimed responsibility.
The attack came a day after a U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded
in another roadside bombing in mountains in eastern Afghanistan.
This year has been the deadliest in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted
the Taliban in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden. The fighting has killed more
than 1,500 people as militants belonging to the Taliban, al-Qaida and other
groups have stepped up attacks.
The explosion that killed the two suspected suicide bombers took place at a
market place in Waish, 75 miles east of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, said
Abdul Hakim Hungar, deputy police chief of Kandahar province. No one else was
hurt.
Hungar said the militants were suspected of planning to attack government
forces, and the owner of the shop they were in at the time of the blast was
arrested. He said the two appeared to be Afghans.
Taliban rebels are active along the Afghan-Pakistan border, staging attacks
against the Afghan government and U.S.-led coalition forces.
The guerrilla leader in the area, Mullah Dadullah, claimed in an interview
with The Associated Press over the weekend that more than 200 militants "have
registered themselves for suicide attacks."
He said such assaults would continue until "Americans and all of their Muslim
and non-Muslim allies are pulled out of the country."
Afghanistan's government dismissed the claim as propaganda, though President
Hamid Karzai said last month that he expects attacks to continue.
Unlike in Iraq, suicide attacks had been relatively rare until September,
fueling fears that rebels could be adopting tactics used in the Middle East.
There have been about a dozen in the past few months, including twin assaults in
the capital of Kabul on Nov. 14 that targeted NATO-led peacekeepers and killed a
German soldier and eight Afghans.
On Wednesday, a court in Pakistan's southwestern Quetta city sentenced
Dadullah to life in prison in absentia for attempting to kill a Pakistani
hard-line cleric and lawmaker in July 2004.
Dadullah, who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan, had been charged with
trying to assassinate Maulana Mohammed Khan Shirani with a roadside bomb, said
Kamran Murtaza, the lawyer for Shirani. Shirani, his three aides and his driver
escaped unhurt.
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