Tuesday, June 02, 2009 KABUL: A bomb blew up a vehicle northeast of the Afghan capital Tuesday and killed six Afghan civilians including two children, the interior ministry said.It was not immediately clear if the bomb was planted in the road, which runs past the largest US military base in Afghanistan, or was fixed to the vehicle, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said. "Two men and two women and two children are killed," he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for attack. Such blasts are usually directed at the Afghan or foreign security forces that are trying to put down an insurgency led by the Taliban. It comes a week after another bombing in the same area killed three US troops serving with a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as well as three Afghan civilians. Insurgents have stepped up bomb attacks in Afghanistan in recent weeks after vowing in April to widen their campaign against the government. Four US soldiers from ISAF were killed in two bomb strikes on Monday in the province of Wardak, which also adjoins Kabul, the force said. Homemade bombs -- called improvised-explosive devices by the military -- cause 70-80 percent of the casualties to foreign troops in Afghanistan but also kill more civilians that soldiers, the military says.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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