Bombs targeting Afghan intelligence service kill 6

[January 12, 2011]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The Taliban took aim at Afghanistan's intelligence services Wednesday, killing six people and wounding more than 30 in two attacks, officials said, while roadside bombs claimed the lives of four NATO service members.

The violence follows a surprise visit to Kabul a day earlier by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who praised coalition advances made against the insurgency while noting that the gains were "fragile and reversible." Biden left Afghanistan for neighboring Pakistan Wednesday morning.

The deadliest attack took place during the morning rush hour in Kabul, where a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up next to a minibus carrying intelligence service employees to work, killing four people, President Hamid Karzai's office said. The Interior Ministry said the blast wounded 32 people, including six intelligence service members -- although it spoke of only two people killed -- one intelligence service member and a civilian. NATO had the same casualty figures.

The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

The powerful blast in Kabul struck on a busy road during the morning rush-hour, shattering the windows of dozens of houses. The suicide bomber's body lay in the street near the wreckage of his motorbike as police and intelligence officials cordoned off the area.

About an hour later in the troubled eastern province of Kunar, a remote-controlled roadside bomb killed an intelligence service colonel and his driver, and wounded two bodyguards, said Abdul Saboor Allahyar, deputy chief of Kunar's provincial police.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks.

Insurgents often target Afghan security officials, although over the past few months the nation's capital has been largely spared the worst of the major attacks in the country.

Strikes against international forces, particularly using roadside bombs, are also frequent. NATO said three coalition service members were killed in such an explosion in the east on Wednesday, and a fourth died in a similar bombing in the south, bringing the total number of international troops killed so far this year to 15.

The alliance did not say which country the soldiers were from or give a more precise location for the bombings. Last year was the deadliest of the nearly decade-long war for international forces, with more than 700 killed, compared to just over 500 in 2009.

The Taliban has proven resilient in the face of the U.S.-led military coalition's nearly decade-long war. Although NATO poured more than 30,000 extra troops into the country last year to pressure the insurgents' traditional strongholds in the south, the Taliban have boosted their operations elsewhere, launching attacks across the north and east.

An extra contingent of 1,400 U.S. Marines are to be deployed in the coming months in the southern province of Helmand, which along with neighboring Kandahar have seen some of the fiercest fighting.

NATO says its campaign so far has had a significant impact. The alliance's spokeswoman, Oana Lungescu, said that "thousands of insurgent leaders have been killed or captured and several thousand fighters have been taken off the battlefield" in the past year.

Lungescu described the guerrilla war as an "industrial strength" insurgency, but disputed recent estimates from military and diplomatic officials at NATO headquarters that placed Taliban forces at up to 25,000 fighters. She called such estimates "highly unreliable," and said focusing on the numerical strength of the Taliban misrepresents gains made by the alliance in the past year.

"There has never been a single reliable source for the size of the insurgency. Numbers referred to a year ago were certainly based on best guess estimates at that time," Lungescu said in e-mailed comments, adding that estimates at the end of 2009 "were anywhere from 25,000 to 35,000."

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said Wednesday that no official Afghan government figures were available, but he estimated the size of the Taliban was between 25,000 and 35,000 people.

[Associated Press; By RAHIM FAIEZ and ELENA BECATOROS]

Associated Press writers Patrick Quinn and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

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