Reply #4: Suicide Bombers Escalate Assaults on Afghanistan [View All]

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KABUL, Afghanistan — Suicide bombers stepped up attacks in southern Afghanistan on Saturday in advance of Id al-Fitr, the festival next week that celebrates the end of Ramadan. But though Afghan security forces were the intended targets, civilians took the biggest toll.

Three separate blasts in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces left at least seven civilians dead, four of them children, and wounded dozens more, Afghan officials said. The attacks continued a pattern of violence across the country that is taking a disproportionately larger toll on ordinary citizens than on government and coalition forces. At least 17 civilians have been killed in the past three days in scattered attacks across the country, including five in a NATO airstrike.

Security forces nationwide have been on high alert anticipating increased violence with the onset of Id al-Fitr, in which Muslims celebrate the end of the month of fasting. Here in the capital, more than 13,000 extra police officers have been put on duty through the three-day festival, which begins early next week, to thwart Taliban threats of intensified attacks, officials with the Interior Ministry said.

In the deadliest of Saturday’s attacks, a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives outside a crowded bank in the southern city of Lashkar Gah, where Afghan soldiers and police officers were lined up at noontime to receive their monthly pay. Security forces stopped the car before it entered the bank, preventing a much higher death toll. Instead, the vehicle detonated in Mukhaberat Square, a busy intersection outside the bank near the provincial governor’s compound, police officials said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/world/asia/28afghanistan.html