A donkey loaded with explosives was remotely blown up close to a police vehicle in southern Afghanistan Thursday, killing a policeman and wounding three others, police said. The force of the blast flung the vehicle into a ditch several meters away in the southern city of Kandahar, a stronghold of the Taliban movement that is behind an increasing number of bombings in Afghanistan.
Flesh and parts of the donkey were scattered across the road, an AFP reporter at the scene said. "A policeman was killed, two policemen and a civilian were wounded in the blast," Kandahar Province police chief Mutihullah Qatah told AFP.
The animal had been tied to a pole and the explosives detonated remotely by suspected militants believed to be in a garden 50 meters away, police said.
Police arrested a man on suspicion of involvement in the attack, which Qatah blamed on the "enemies of Afghanistan," a term often used by officials to refer to Taliban insurgents.
The hard-line Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001 and are waging an insurgency against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai that increasingly relies on bombings.
|