Taliban Suicide Attack Injures 3 NATO Soldiers in Kabul

Sat Oct 23, 2004 11:37 AM ET

By Simon Cameron-Moore KABUL (Reuters) -

A Taliban suicide fighter killed himself and wounded at least seven others, including three members of a NATO-led peacekeeping force, in a grenade attack on a busy shopping street in central Kabul on Saturday.

The attack in the Afghan capital came as election workers entered the closing stages of a marathon count from a landmark presidential poll on Oct. 9, with the US-installed Hamid Karzai polling 54.6 percent of the votes tallied so far.

Kabul police chief General Baba Jan said the attacker had six hand grenades strapped to his body, but three failed to detonate.

"One person was killed who is believed to have been the attacker," said Lt Colonel Patrick Poulain, spokesman at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in the Afghan capital.

Reuters' witnesses saw the attacker's bloody corpse lying on the sidewalk, near a damaged ISAF vehicle . The ISAF troops had been patrolling Chicken Street, a well-known haunt for foreigners shopping for carpets, jewelry and antiques.

"The Taliban takes responsibility for the suicide attack in Kabul. This was an Afghan Taliban Mujahid (holy warrior), and we plan more attacks," Taliban spokesman Mullah Latifullah Hakimi told Reuters by satellite telephone.

ISAF's Poulain said seven people were wounded in the blast. One of the ISAF troops was in a serious condition, while the other two were slightly hurt. There were no details on their nationalities.

One of the wounded civilians was believed to be a foreign woman, but Poulain added that was unconfirmed.

The Afghan capital has escaped any major attack for the past two months as security forces stepped up operations to stop Taliban fighters and their allies from disrupting the election.

ISAF has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, acting as peacekeepers in Kabul and nine northern provinces, while U.S.-led forces numbering over 18,000 are scouring the south and southeast for Taliban guerrillas and foreign al Qaeda fighters.