Taliban suicide attack kills 14, including NATO troops

KHOST, Afghanistan – A suicide attack on a joint Afghan-NATO foot patrol on Monday killed at least 14 people, including three NATO troops and an interpreter, officials said.

Four Afghan police and six civilians were also killed, and 37 were wounded in the attack near a market in the eastern city of Khost, the provincial governor’s office said.

Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the blast.

“Today at around 8:30 a.m. (12 noon Philippine time) a suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted a joint patrol in Khost city in a crowded area.

“In this inhuman attack three police and 37 civilians were wounded, and six civilians and four police, including the commander of the quick reaction forces, were killed,” the governor’s office said in a statement.

Hospital sources put the number of Afghan dead at 10 with more than 60 wounded.

NATO’s US-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed that three NATO service members and an ISAF-contracted interpreter had been killed in the attack.

The Taliban Islamists said on their website that the suicide attack was carried out by “a hero mujahid, Shohaib, from Kunduz”, claiming that eight foreigners and six Afghan soldiers were killed.

The deaths take coalition casualties to at least 347 this year, according to an AFP tally.

NATO has more than 100,000 troops fighting a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, but they are due to pull out by the end of 2014.

Joint NATO-Afghan operations have been temporarily restricted since last month after a spike in insider attacks, in which Afghan security forces turned their weapons against their coalition allies.

The latest blast came a day after NATO announced that a firefight between coalition troops and their Afghan allies killed an ISAF soldier, a civilian contractor and three Afghan army troops in circumstances that remained murky.