Latest insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan kills 21

[EFerrari]

Source: McClatchy

By Jonathan S. Landay and Hashim Shukoor | McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan — Seven suicide attackers killed at least 21 people in near-simultaneous assaults Thursday in a provincial capital in southern Afghanistan in the latest violent incident to shake President Hamid Karzai's government and its U.S.-led military allies.

The victims included 10 children and three women who died when an assailant crashed a vehicle into a hospital maternity ward and set off a cargo of explosives, officials said.

"The explosion was so powerful it rocked my house," Mohammad Daoud Zaheer, a retired district chief who lives a mile from the hospital, said in a telephone interview.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the coordinated attacks, which seemed certain to keep Karzai and his U.S.-led allies off kilter and public anxiety running high amid a rash of high-profile assassinations and guerrilla-style strikes coinciding with the start of a drawdown of 33,000 U.S. troops from southern Afghanistan.




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