Afghanistan Hit by Wave of Violence

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/world/asia/police-officers-are-targets-in-wave-of-afghan-violence.html

Afghanistan Hit by Wave of Violence
By AZAM AHMED
Published: May 18, 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan — A spate of violence across Afghanistan has claimed the lives of nearly two dozen Afghan police officers and civilians in the past few days, including a district police official assassinated over a recent anti-Taliban campaign.

Two gunmen on motorcycles in the Khaki Safed district of Farah Province, in western Afghanistan, killed the police official, Abdul Ghani, in front of his home on Friday night, apparently as retribution for a crackdown on the Taliban that killed several insurgents, a spokesman for the Farah governor said.

The targeted hit was a rare example of recent violence not involving a bomb or civilian casualties. In Helmand Province in the south, six Afghan policemen were killed and four were injured on Thursday when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in the Gereshk district. On Friday, three police officers and six civilians were killed by two car bombs in a Kandahar city development owned by Mahmoud Karzai, President Hamid Karzai’s brother. Meanwhile, an explosion on Saturday morning in Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, killed at least one border policeman while wounding eight others.

The annual fighting season is beginning in earnest, including a huge bombing in Kabul on Thursday that injured dozens and killed 16 people, 6 of them Americans, the deadliest attack in the city in months.