AFGHANISTAN: Sixty-one people were killed and dozens wounded in outbreaks of violence across Afghanistan in the troubled country's bloodiest 24 hours in more than a year.
At least 25 people were killed after fighting erupted early yesterday between forces of a sacked official and his successor in a remote district of Uruzgan province, a cabinet minister said.
Meanwhile, at least 15 others died, including a woman and children, when a suspected Taliban bomb blew apart a bus in the southern province of Helmand.
Government forces said they killed 16 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters and lost five of their own in clashes in the south-east that began late on Tuesday.
The cabinet minister, who did not want to be further identified, said the fighting in Uruzgan involved supporters of Amanullah, the former ruler of the remote district of Kajran and his successor, Abdul Rahman Khan.
He quoted Khan as saying it started after Amanullah's fighters opened fire on a bus carrying his supporters.
"Khan told me eight of his people died in the bus incident, in which 20 were wounded, and he lost seven others. Amanullah told me 10 of his men, including close family, were killed." The minister said the fighting was continuing and the central government was trying to broker a ceasefire.
Ghulam Mahaiuddin, head of administration in Helmand, said the bus blast there happened early in the morning in Nadi Ali district, west of the provincial capital Lashkargah.
"Eight of those killed on the bus were male, six of them were children and there was a woman too," he told reporters.
Mahaiuddin said it appeared the bomb had gone off accidentally inside the bus and may have been intended for an attack on independence celebrations in Lashkargah next week.
Troubled Helmand was a main bastion of the Taliban until its overthrow and has been hit by several bloody attacks by a resurgent Taliban guerrilla movement in recent months.
In the south-eastern province of Khost, border forces said they had killed 16 Taliban and al-Qaeda guerrillas. Five border policemen were also died.
Border police officer Maj Ghafar said the insurgents used heavy guns, rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades to attack a base used by a border battalion in the Shinkai area east of Khost and adjacent to the border with Pakistan on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, police in Kabul said two student Taliban supporters were killed and one wounded after a car bomb they were making blew up in a western suburb of the capital on Tuesday.- (Reuters)