ASADABAD, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber killed 10 people yesterday in an attack on a gathering of tribal elders in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province, a volatile area where insurgents have gained ground in recent months.
The attack took place in Asmaar district when elders from two tribes, some of them former warlords, were meeting to resolve a dispute, provincial police chief Khalilullah Ziaee said.
The suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of the group, targeting former Mujahideen commander Mohammad Zarin, who died along with nine others. At least seven people were wounded, Ziaee said. Zarin fought the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan during the 1980s, before the fall of the Moscow-backed Kabul government.
Violence in Afghanistan last year reached the highest levels since the Taliban government was overthrown by US-led Afghan forces in late 2001, with record casualties on all sides. The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in 2010 rose 15 per cent from the previous year to 2,777, according to the United Nations, with insurgents responsible for around three-quarters of those deaths.
Kunar shares a long and porous border with lawless areas of neighbouring Pakistan which insurgents use as a safe haven to gather their forces and from which to launch attacks against the Afghan government and its western backers. Last week, Afghan officials said a joint operation by Afghan and Nato-led forces killed about 130 militants in Kunar. – (Reuters)