Suicide bomber attacks foreign convoy south of Kabul

Friday, January 12th 2007, 5:52 am

By: News On 6

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) _ A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-filled car into a two-vehicle convoy carrying foreigners south of Kabul on Friday, wounding at least one Afghan civilian, police said.

One of the vehicles was on fire and police had cordoned off the area in Logar province's Muhammad Agha district, provincial police chief Gen. Muhammad Mustafa said.

It was not immediately clear who the foreigners were or if any were hurt in the blast some 25 miles south of Kabul.

The attack comes a day after NATO said its forces killed scores of insurgents who crossed from Pakistan in the biggest battle of the Afghan winter, while Pakistan's army fired artillery at trucks supplying militants on the other side of the border.

NATO said it had tracked the suspected Taliban militants through air surveillance while the fighters were still in Pakistan. Once they crossed the frontier, NATO and Afghan soldiers attacked the two separate groups with ground fire and airstrikes during a nine-hour battle that began Wednesday evening.

Gen. Murad Ali, the Afghan army regional deputy corps commander, said the insurgents traveled into Afghanistan's southern Paktika province with several trucks of ammunition. Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick, a U.S. military spokesman, said it was likely they were going to carry out an immediate attack, given the size of the groups.

Taliban militants last year launched a record number of attacks in Afghanistan, and an estimated 4,000 people died in insurgency-related violence, the bloodiest year since the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime in 2001. Afghan and Western officials say the militants operate from sanctuaries in Pakistan, but Islamabad insists it does all it can to stop them.

The offensive in Paktika province was the first major engagement of 2007 and appeared to be the largest battle since a multi-day operation killed more than 500 Taliban fighters in southern Kandahar province in September.

Fitzpatrick said 130 fighters were killed or wounded in the attack. The Afghan Defense Ministry put the death toll at 80. As is common in Afghanistan, independent confirmation of the death toll at the remote battle site was not immediately possible.

Pakistani army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said the army attack on the militants' trucks Wednesday night shows the army can act swiftly and effectively if it is given ``real-time'' intelligence.

``We don't deny that some people are coming from this side. That's why we seek intelligence in real time. We are keen to stop it,'' he said.

It was the Pakistani army's first reported offensive in the North Waziristan tribal region since a September peace deal between the government and pro-Taliban militants that critics say has provided a sanctuary for insurgents.

John Negroponte, the U.S. national intelligence director, told a Senate committee on Thursday that Pakistan represents a major source of Islamic extremism and is a refuge for top terror leaders.

Negroponte said in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that ``eliminating the safe haven that the Taliban and other extremists have found in Pakistan's tribal areas is not sufficient to end the insurgency in Afghanistan, but it is necessary.''