Roadside bombs kill 17 civilians in Afghanistan

[July 02, 2011]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Roadside bombs have killed 17 people in southern Afghanistan, including 13 who died when an explosion ripped through the van they were traveling in on Saturday morning, the government said.

The Ministry of Interior said four women and two children were among those who died in the van in Shamulzayi district of Zabul province.

In neighboring Kandahar province, two civilians riding a donkey were killed Friday night when the animal stepped on a bomb in Maruf district, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, police chief in Kandahar province.

When villagers came to recover the bodies, another roadside bomb went off and killed two more civilians, he said.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attacks, saying in a statement that "bombings that kill innocent civilians are the work of people who don't want the nation to have a life without sadness."

Also in the south on Saturday, two gunmen on a motorcycle killed Wakil Mohammad Khan, a member of the local council in Nahri Sarraj district of Helmand province, the interior ministry said.

Separately, NATO reported the deaths of two coalition service members in roadside bombings -- one Saturday in the west and the other Friday in the south. Italian defense officials said the service member killed in the west was an Italian who died when a bomb exploded near a village in Farah province.

In Kabul, about 500 demonstrators chanted "Death to the Pakistan military!" and "Long live Afghanistan!" as they protested against rocket attacks that have killed at least 36 civilians, including 12 children, along the eastern border with Pakistan in recent weeks.

The protest, organized by a group known as the National Participation Front, called on the international community to warn Pakistan against the attacks. Group director Najibullah Kabali accused the Pakistani army and intelligence service of launching rocket attacks on innocent people in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces.

Pakistan on Monday denied Afghan accusations that it fired hundreds of rockets into two eastern provinces in Afghanistan, killing the 36 civilians.

Pakistani army spokesman Maj. Athar Abbas said no rounds were intentionally fired into Afghanistan, but that some may have accidentally fallen onto the neighboring state's territory when security forces targeted militants carrying out cross-border attacks into Pakistan.

The back-and-forth accusations have further strained the troubled relationship between the two countries.

[Associated Press; By DEB RIECHMANN]

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