Multiple attacks kill many in Afghanistan

Several attacks across Afghanistan have killed more than a dozen people, including 12 workers clearing land mines in the country’s south and seven Afghan soldiers in Kabul.

The largest attack on Saturday targeted the Shorab camp in Helmand province, where the demining workers were based, Afghan police spokesman Farid Ahmad Obaid told the Associated Press news agency.
Ghulam Farouk Parwani, a military commander at the camp, told Al Jazeera that six workers were also wounded in the attack in Helmand.
The de-miners, who lived on the base, were reportedly travelling to work in the Nad Ali district when they were attacked, Parwani said.
The Afghan army and the air force launched a counterattack, killing four of the assailants and capturing three, he told Al Jazeera.
Meawnhile, a suicide attack on Saturday evening in the Afghan capital killed seven government troops, and injured 18 others, including civilians.
Reports said the military bus was burnt down after the attacker, who was on foot, detonated himself.

Tenuous security
News of the attacks in Kabul and Helmand came just hours after Afghan authorities said a senior official of the country’s Supreme Court had been shot and killed in the capital, Kabul.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack that killed Atiqullah Rawoofi, the head of the secretariat of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court.
Farid Afzali, chief of Kabul police’s criminal investigation unit, said the attack occurred early on Saturday morning near Rawoofi’s home in a northwestern Kabul neighbourhood.
A colleague of Rawoofi, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said two men on a motorbike shot Rawoofi as he was walking from his home to his car.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for all the attacks.
Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, said security was a huge task for the Afghan National Army (ANA) as the NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan.
“There is a lot of concerns among Afghans here about security and how tenuous it is. There is a lot of concern from people that they could just be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The Taliban has intensified attacks in the run-up to the withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
On Friday, a Taliban bomb killed to American soldiers following an attack on a convoy in Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.

Source: Al Jazeera