Afghan car bomb kills 5 police, child

A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at a police parking lot in central Kandahar on Sunday, killing at least seven people, including five police officers and a child, in the fourth attempted suicide bombing there in less than a month.

The blast wounded at least 19 people, including six police officers, three children and two women, who were taken to Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar, said Mohammed Daoud Farhad, a doctor there.

The attack came just a day after the United Nations reported that more civilians died in 2011 than in any previous year of the war.

The Taliban have pledged repeatedly not to harm civilians, but their rhetoric has not been reflected in their tactics.

The Kandahar bombing occurred near a bazaar, on a main road used by civilians that runs beside a large sewage canal.

The bodies of three of the police officers were thrown into the canal by the explosion and several police vehicles were overturned. Windows were shattered in more than a hundred shops at the bazaar, leaving the streets thick with broken glass.

An official for the Afghan intelligence department in Kandahar said that informers and captured insurgents have told investigators recently that the city is in insurgents’ crosshairs.

Taliban commanders have been ferrying would-be suicide bombers to the city and organizing attacks, the intelligence official said.

Local shopkeepers said they had warned the police about parking their cars in the area.