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Suicide Blast Kills One American Service Member And Four Afghan Civilians In AfghanistanBy ugeshji, Section Suicide Bombers
A suicide car bomb on a heavily guarded road in the diplomatic district of the capital killed one American service member and four Afghan civilians on Saturday, and an American soldier was killed when a helicopter crashed under fire in northeastern Afghanistan, American and Afghan officials said.
 An American soldier was assisted Saturday after a suicide attack near an American base in Kabul, Afghanistan. The attack killed one American service member and four Afghan civilians. A second suicide bomber rammed his minibus into a joint convoy of the Afghan police and the United States military in the eastern province of Nangarhar at noon on Saturday, killing one Afghan civilian and wounding nine others, said Abdulzai Wayan, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Three of the wounded were Afghan police officers and the others were civilians, he said. The car-bomb explosion in Kabul, between a United States military base and the German Embassy, wounded 26 people, including six American service members and an American civilian, the United States military said. The American base, Camp Eggers, stands close to the road, protected by concrete blast walls. Civilians bore the brunt of the explosion, and the Ministry of Interior reported that Kabul's hospitals received four dead civilians and 19 wounded. It was not immediately clear if the American service members were wounded while traveling on the road or inside Camp Eggers, the headquarters of the United States forces training the Afghan Army. At least one soldier was wounded in a guard post above the walls overlooking the road. The Taliban immediately claimed responsibility for both suicide attacks, and a spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, in a phone call threatened more suicide bombings "against NATO, ISAF and Afghan forces." ISAF is the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which has overall responsibility for security in Afghanistan. Click On "Full Story" For More...
Col. Jerry O'Hara, a spokesman for the United States military, denounced the Taliban for attacking a "well-traveled civilian road."
"This incident will only strengthen our collective resolve to aggressively pursue enemy networks before they can hurt innocent Afghans and coalition forces," he said in a statement. Afghan security forces have reduced the number of suicide bombings in Kabul and elsewhere in recent months but have been facing continuing threats from insurgents. The police found and defused a car rigged with explosives in the southern city of Kandahar on Friday. The American helicopter that came under fire in the northeast, near the Pakistani border, was a Chinook carrying seven people, the United States military said. A military statement said that the cause of the crash was being investigated and that "small arms fire was present at the time of the incident," Reuters reported. Villagers nearby, in the Korengal Valley of Kunar Province, told Reuters that it looked as though the helicopter had been shot down and that smoke was billowing from the scene of the crash. In the attack in Kabul, the bomber's car crashed into a sewage tanker and several other vehicles just outside the entrance to the German Embassy. Bodies and blood stains covered the road. "All I saw was a big explosion," said a witness, Abdul Ghani, 22, who was in his car and barely 20 paces from the explosion. "I saw four municipality workers fall down on the road. I saw blood everywhere." The attack in Nangarhar occurred as the convoy was passing through the small town of Mano, about 15 miles south of Jalalabad. Source: nytimes.com Suicide Blast Kills 5 in Afghanistan
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