Car bomb hits hotel in Kandahar; 4 German troops die in fighting in northern Afghanistan

Car bomb hits hotel in southern Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A car bomb exploded outside a hotel in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar Thursday, injuring at least eight people, while fighting in the north of the country left four German troops dead, officials said.

The explosion in front of the Noor Jehan Hotel shattered windows in the shabby four-story structure, destroyed five vehicles and damaged a number of shops in the area. At least two of those injured were in serious condition, said local official Nidah Mohammed.

The hotel, located in a busy downtown commercial district, is home to a number of foreign news organizations and has little security. International forces present in the city rarely patrol through the area. The news organizations are largely staffed by Afghans, and there was no immediate indication foreigners were among those hurt.

Aghalala, a money changer working the street in front of the hotel, said two men pulled up in the car, parked it, and walked away. Five minutes later the white sedan exploded, said Aghalala, who uses only one name.

Following the afternoon blast, U.S. and Afghan military convoys arrived, blocking off the street and jamming cell phone signals, apparently to prevent insurgents detonating any remote controlled bombs that might be in the area. Police set up roadblocks blocking traffic from in front of the hotel.

Kandahar is the main city of Afghanistan’s volatile south from which the hardline Taliban Islamic militant movement emerged as a political and military force in the early 1990s. NATO forces are expected to launch a major operation in and around the city this summer in a bid to root out insurgents and turn around the nearly nine-year war. The Taliban has reasserted its presence in large parts of the country from which it had faded following the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled its regime.

In a sign of how the insurgency has also spread to the once-stable north, four German soldiers were killed and five wounded in fighting Thursday in Baghlan province, according to the Defense Ministry in Berlin. It said fighting broke out after a German Eagle armored vehicle was struck by what was believed to be a rocket around noon (0730 GMT).

Afghan police had earlier reported heavy fighting involving Afghan, German and other foreign forces against the Taliban in Baghlan that included use of air strikes and heavy weaponry. Provincial police spokesman Habib Rahman said three Afghan policemen were also killed in the fighting.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who was due to end a visit to Afghanistan on Thursday, was extending his stay in the country, the ministry said.

It was the largest loss of live in a single day for the German contingent in Afghanistan since four soldiers were killed and 29 injured in June 2003 when their convoy was attacked en route to the airport in Kabul.

Earlier this month, three German soldiers died in a firefight in Kunduz province just north of Baghlan, fueling opposition at home to Germany’s commitment of about 4,500 troops to the multinational NATO force.

The magazine Stern reported Wednesday that 62 percent of 1,004 Germans polled by the Forsa institute on April 8-9 said they support bringing the troops home. Stern said that is the highest percentage ever on that question. The poll’s margin of error was given as plus or minus three percentage points.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, reported that civilian injuries caused by roadside bombs and other explosives in southern Afghanistan have soared so far this year.

The Red Cross said a hospital it supports in Kandahar admitted up to 40 percent more patients wounded by bombs in the first two months of the year compared with the same period last year. It said in a report the wounded came from the surrounding province, also called Kandahar, as well as neighboring Helmand.

It said the Mirwais Hospital treated 51 patients for injuries caused by homemade bombs in March alone, well above the average monthly figure.

“Homemade bombs and improvised mines continue to pose a major threat to civilians in the south of Afghanistan. In the last few weeks, ICRC personnel at Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar have observed a substantial increase in casualties,” the report said.

The insurgency employs roadside bombs and concealed homemade explosives to attack Afghan government forces and NATO troops and spread fear among the populace.

On Thursday, a scrap metal dealer and four children helping him were killed by a suspected homemade bomb as they loaded materials collected door-to-door in rural Kandahar onto a vehicle, provincial government spokesman Zulmai Ayubi said. Eight children were also wounded in the blast, which occurred near the town of Takhta Pul.

Elsewhere, one civilian was killed and one injured when a bomb blew up beneath the tractor they were riding near Gardez in the eastern province of Paktika, according to the Afghan Interior Ministry.

On Thursday, the chief U.N. representative in Afghanistan called for greater attention to civilian safety in the wake of the deaths of four Afghans who died Monday when the bus they were traveling in near Kandahar city was fired on by a U.S. military convoy. U.S. forces said they regretted the incident, which remains under investigation.

Staffan de Mistura called on “all parties to the conflict to do their utmost to minimize harm to ordinary Afghans and to take every possible precautionary measure to distinguish between civilians and combatants in their operations.”

In his statement, de Mistura also said he appreciated new guidelines issued by the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, that aim to limit use of force and minimize potential civilian losses.

At least 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed in fighting last year, an increase of 14 percent from 2008, according to the United Nations. About two-thirds of the civilian deaths were a result of actions initiated by the insurgents. The percentage of civilian deaths attributed to NATO and Afghan government forces fell.

Despite that, civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. and other international forces are a major concern because they’re believed to fuel resentment of the Afghan government and generate sympathy for the insurgency.

Associated Press writers Amir Shah, Slobodan Lekic and Christopher Bodeen in Kabul contributed to this story.