Children killed in bicycle bomb attack

A bicycle bomb killed at least 10 people, most of them children, in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar today, underlining the violence and insecurity still plaguing Afghanistan two years after the fall of the Taliban.

The blast left a street near a military base in eastern Kandahar strewn with wrecked bicycles, victims’ blood and shattered glass from a passing truck.

Eight of the dead were children, aged 7-15, who had been playing on a patch of waste ground on the side of the street, Deputy Police Chief Salim Khan said.

The lorry driver and a male passer-by also died, while 23 others were injured, he said.

A soldier, Amanullah Popolzai, said authorities arrested a man spotted running away from the scene shortly before the explosion. The man, who appeared to be an Afghan, was caught trying to hide in a nearby home.

“This was the work of the Taliban. The man looked like he was a Talib fighter,” Popolzai said.

The US military has its southern headquarters in the city, a former Taliban stronghold, and dozens of Afghan and American soldiers immediately swarmed into the area, sealing it off.

Khan said the man had been taken to an Afghan military headquarters just 100 yards from the scene for interrogation, but had no further information.

He said another bomb had also detonated nearby a few minutes earlier, causing no injuries.

Southern and eastern Afghanistan have been plagued with a stream of shootings, kidnappings and bomb blasts against civilians as well as soldiers, many of the them claimed by Taliban.

The violence threatens the timetable for national elections supposed to take place in the summer, and has all but halted badly needed rebuilding across a huge swathe of the country along the Pakistani border.