Eight soldiers die in Afghanistan suicide attack
Afghan officials said the attack took place in the Zhari district of Kandahar province, where the US poured in troops this summer as part of a surge of forces to try to oust the Taliban from its southern strongholds.
General Abdul Hamid, the Afghan army chief for the province, said the attacker drove a minibus into the entrance of the base yesterday morning just as vehicles were preparing to move out on a patrol.
“They were leaving the compound and at that moment, the minibus attacked and they hit right at the entrance of the base,” Hamid said.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they were retaliating for all the attacks launched on them in the area in recent months.
NATO said only that the service members had been killed in an insurgent attack and declined to identify their nationalities. Most NATO troops in the south are American. More than 670 international troops have been killed this year, well above the 502 total for all of 2009.
Yesterday’s attack followed another on November 29 in which an Afghan policeman turned his gun on his American trainers, killing six of them.
