Attack Underway on Polish Base in East Afghanistan
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - An explosion rocked a base shared by Polish and Afghan forces in a restive eastern Afghan province on Wednesday and a gun battle was underway, a witness said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
Thick black smoke was rising from the base in the provincial capital of Ghazni in the attack soon after 4 pm (1130 GMT) and NATO helicopters were hovering above, the witness said. At least five people were wounded.
Two earlier attacks aimed at NATO targets killed 10 Afghan civilians and wounded more than 20, police and provincial officials said.
A suicide bomber blew himself up near a foreign troop convoy in Lashkar Gah, capital of the southern battleground province of Helmand, on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the NATO-led force said no foreign troops were killed or wounded, Reuters reported.
The Taliban have not claimed responsibility for that attack, but they are keen to keep pressure on the NATO mission here ahead of its planned end next year.
Helmand has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting between the NATO-led force and the insurgents since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.
On Tuesday in the western province of Farah, Taliban insurgents fired rockets at a carpark holding dozens of trucks that supply NATO forces with fuel, said the provincial governor's spokesman, Abdul Rahman Zhwanday.
Six Afghan drivers were killed and about a dozen wounded. Forty trucks were also torched, he said.
