Afghan Suicide Attack Wounds 89 as World Marks 9/11 Anniversary
A Taliban suicide bomber driving a truck attacked an advance NATO combat post in central Afghanistan, wounding 89 people including 50 American soldiers, the U.S. Army said Sunday.
News of Saturday's attack came as the world marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States and led to the invasion of Afghanistan and toppling at the end of 2001 of the Taliban.
U.S. Army spokesman Major David Eastburn said 50 American soldiers and 15 Afghans were among the injured. It was not clear who the others hurt in the attack were.
"It happened at 5:15 pm on Saturday. It detonated near the entry point at a combat outpost, resulting in 89 wounded in action and a six-meter hole in the wall," he said, citing "preliminary reports".
NATO's International Security Assistance Force said: "A Taliban suicide bomber detonated a large vehicle-borne improvised-explosive device at the entrance of Combat Outpost Sayed Abad, Wardak province, yesterday (Saturday)."
The Taliban, a radical Islamist grouping that has been waging an increasingly deadly insurgency against the Western-backed government and foreign troops, claimed responsibility on their website for the attack.
The post-9/11 invasion of war-scarred Afghanistan by the United States and its allies "will remain a permanent stigma on the face of Western democracy", the Taliban said Saturday to mark the attacks on the United States.
The Islamists, who refused to give up al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden following September 11, said the people of Afghanistan had "endless stamina for a long war" and would "send the Americans to the dustbin of history".
In a long statement issued in Persian and English, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said the attacks on the U.S. in 2001 had been used, unjustly, as a "pretext" for the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is the name the Taliban gave themselves during their rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
A decade of fighting in Afghanistan began with Operation Enduring Freedom and snowballed into a huge effort involving around 130,000 foreign troops from dozens of countries.
Launched a month after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S.-led military campaign under president George W. Bush was designed to topple the Taliban and ensure al-Qaida could no longer use Afghanistan as a safe haven.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, the commander of foreign forces, U.S. General John Allen, said: "The last 10 years have not been easy, both the international coalition and Afghans have endured much hardship.
"We have suffered setbacks and difficult moments, to be sure there are challenges ahead but today, on this sacred day of remembrance, I can say with confidence that together we're on the path of success in Afghanistan."
Of 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, 33,000 will leave by mid-2012, even as a still-potent Taliban insurgency is focused on headline-grabbing suicide attacks against government officials and foreign targets.
In 10 years of conflict, battlefield successes have ebbed and flowed for the troops, who invaded the country on October 7, 2001 alongside the anti-Taliban mujahedeen, driving the Taliban from Kabul by early December.
But the Taliban regrouped and, allied with other extremist factions, have been conducting an insurgency since that has been killing record numbers of foreign soldiers with each passing year.
Thousands of civilians have also been caught up in the violence.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/14749 |