KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber killed 21 people, including three U.S. soldiers, at a checkpoint in a packed market Wednesday in eastern Afghanistan - the third assault targeting Americans in as many days.
The daily violence risks undermining international hopes of an orderly hand-over to Afghan forces at the end of 2014. Although American officials stress successes in establishing pockets of governance in some areas, the east and south continue to be plagued by regular attacks and clashes.
Wednesday’s attack took place in a marketplace in the city of Khost, near the Pakistani border and about 90 miles southeast of the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The assailant approached on foot through the shops and taxi stands packed with people and then detonated his explosives as he approached Afghan and U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint, said Baryalai Wakman, a spokesman for the Khost provincial government.
Three U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed, according to American officials. A convoy in the area responded to the attack, said Maj. Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Besides the interpreter, 17 Afghans also were killed, according to the Afghan president’s office. Two were police officers and the rest were civilians, Wakman said. Another 32 people were wounded, all civilians, he said.
Eleven bodies were taken to Khost’s main hospital, said hospital Director Majid Mangal. He said those included a police officer and a 15-year-old. Another six bodies were taken to the private Badari Clinic in Khost, said Mohammad Ayub Jan, a doctor at the clinic.
In nearby Logar province earlier Wednesday, a roadside bombing killed three women and four children crammed into a wagon pulled by a tractor. Four men also were wounded in the blast on a road outside the city of Pul-i-Alam, said provincial spokesman Din Mohammad Darwesh.
The bombings came a day after militants carried out twoattacks in southern Afghanistan, storming a NATO military base and attacking a police checkpoint. An unspecified number of U.S. troops were wounded in the attack on the NATO base, officials said.
On Monday, three gunmen dressed in Afghan police uniforms killed one American serviceman and wounded nine others in Kandahar’s Zhari district. Nearly 1,900 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the war began more than a decade ago.
In other developments, Pakistan has arrested a Frenchman accused of being a prominent al-Qaida militant, officials said Wednesday.
The Frenchman, Naamen Meziche, was captured in a raid in the Baluchistan region near the border with Iran, officials said, without specifying when this took place.
The officials did not give their names in keeping with the policy of the Pakistani security forces.
Torsten Voss, the deputy head of Hamburg’s branch of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, said Meziche was known to be part of the militant scene in the northern port city. Voss said Meziche left the city for Pakistan in 2009 with a group.
Among the group was Ahmad Wali Siddiqui, who was last month found guilty of membership in a terrorist organization and sentenced to six years in prison.
Siddiqui was captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2010. Information he provided to authorities on purported al-Qaida plots targeting Europeancities prompted Germany and other nations to raise alert levels at Christmastime that year but no attacks materialized.
Another in the group was German-Syrian dual citizen Rami Makanesi, who was convicted last year in a Frankfurt state court of membership in al-Qaida and sentenced to four years and nine months in prison. He was arrested in Pakistan in June 2010 and extradited to Germany.
The two have implicated Meziche in training at the same al-Qaida camps in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, Voss said.
In Pakistan, the officials said Meziche was a close associate of Younis al-Mauritani, whom Pakistani security forces arrested last year in a joint operation with the CIA. That arrest also took place in Baluchistan. U.S. officials said al-Mauritani was believed to have been plotting attacks in Europe.
A senior Pakistan security official said al-Mauritani’s interrogation led officials to Meziche. He was arrested while trying to flee the country, likely on his way to Somalia, said the official. If Meziche is found to have broken the law in Pakistan, he would be charged and tried inside the country, the official said. Otherwise, he would be deported to France.
Baluchistan also borders Afghanistan to the northeast and has been a hotbed of militant activity.
Information for this article was contributed by Amir Shah, Pauline Jelinek, Rebecca Santana, Munir Ahmed, Asif Shahzid and David Rising of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 06/21/2012