Suicide bomber kills 7 Afghans at NATO base
KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomb attack outside a NATO base killed seven civilians in southeastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, a local official said, a day after a brazen strike by the Taliban in the same town.
Violence in Afghanistan has surged to its worst level since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001, despite increasing numbers of foreign troops.
Another 21 civilians were wounded in Wednesday's attack by a suicide bomber in a car packed with explosives in Khost town.
An official from the province of the same name said all the victims were labourers working at the NATO base on the outskirts of Khost township.
"U.S. forces ... have encircled the area. The toll may rise," provincial official Wazir Padshah told Reuters by telephone.
There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties among NATO-led troops.
Khost, on the porous southeastern border with Pakistan and separated by mountains from the rest of Afghanistan, houses a large base for NATO troops, mainly from the United States.
BRAZEN RAID
The attack occurred the morning after a group of Taliban suicide bombers attacked government buildings in Khost town, one of the most brazen raids by the insurgents in months.
Nine Afghans, including members of the security forces, and 11 insurgents were killed in Tuesday's raid, in which gun battles lasting several hours were fought. The militants also took a government building and held hostages for hours before being overpowered.
In a separate incident overnight, U.S. forces said two civilians were killed and four wounded in air strikes launched against fighters who fired rockets at bases in southeastern Paktika province.
Six insurgents were killed in the strikes, they said.
Civilian casualties have been a cause of increasing anger in Afghanistan. Afghan officials say U.S. forces killed more than 100 civilians in strikes in Farah province in the west of the country last week.
U.S. commanders say they believe the death toll from that incident was lower and blame the Taliban for putting civilians in danger and possibly killing some of them.
The Taliban have vowed to step up their attacks on Afghan cities this year while Washington is in the process of more than doubling its forces in Afghanistan, from 32,000 troops at the beginning of 2009 to a projected 68,000 by year's end.
The United States now has 47,000 troops in Afghanistan, along with 33,000 from other Western countries.
Most of the new U.S. troops are being deployed to the south to battle a worsening Taliban-led insurgency.
The Farah incident has prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to call for an end to air strikes, but he was rebuffed.
(Reporting by Kamal Sadat and Peter Graff; Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Paul Tait)