Insurgents killed six police officers at a checkpoint and a suicide bomber killed three civilians at a shopping bazaar in separate attacks Sunday in eastern Afghanistan, while an independent security group warned 2013 is on track to be one of the most violent years of the war.
April already has been the deadliest month this year for security forces and Afghan and foreign civilians as the U.S. and other countries prepare to end their combat mission by the end of next year. According to an Associated Press tally, 222 people have been killed in violence around the nation this month, including Sunday’s nine fatalities.
The Taliban ambushed the checkpoint in the Dayak district of Ghazni province, killing six police officers, wounding one and leaving one missing, said Col. Mohammad Hussain, deputy provincial police chief. The checkpoint was manned by Afghan local police, forces recruited at the village level that are nominally under the control of the Afghan Interior Ministry.
On Friday, Taliban insurgents attacked a local police checkpoint in Andar, a district of Ghazni province neighboring Dayak. They killed 13 officers, according to Sidiq Sidiqi, the Interior Ministry spokesman.
The second attack on Sunday hit Paktika province, which borders Ghazni. A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a shopping bazaar around midday, killing three people and wounding five civilians and two police officers, said Mokhlis Afghan, the spokesman for the provincial governor. Among the dead was Asanullah Sadat, who stepped down as the district’s governor two years ago.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for Taliban, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing. In an email to reporters, he said the Taliban used the bomber to target Sadat because of his close relations with the Afghan government and the U.S.
In other violence, the Taliban cut a hand and foot off each of two villagers they accused of helping escort coalition convoys, a spokesman for the provincial chief in western Herat province said.
Noor Khan Nekzad said the men were admitted to a hospital in Herat city on Sunday, two days after the amputations. The Taliban have long killed government employees and those who help the coalition, considering them enemy collaborators, but rarely have they meted out punishment by cutting off limbs.
Hostilities have surged in Afghanistan as the spring fighting season begins. This year is being closely watched because Afghan forces must operate with less support from the international military coalition. With foreign forces due to hand over combat responsibilities to the local forces next year, the current fighting is a test of their ability to take on the country’s insurgency.
Reflecting the rise in bloodshed, the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office said Sunday there were 2,331 insurgent-initiated attacks in the first quarter of this year, a 47 percent increase over the same January-March period last year. “We assess that the current re-escalation trend will be preserved throughout the entire season and that 2013 is set to become the second most violent year after 2011,” which suffered 2,755 such attacks in the first three months of the year, the report said.
The U.S.-led NATO coalition has stopped releasing statistics on insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.
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