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Bombing Kills Afghan Police Officers

27 November 2010 18:28 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the police headquarters of Paktika Province in southeastern, Afghanistan killing at least 10 policemen and injuring 13 others, according to Mohammed Shah, the emergency physician on duty at the local hospital and NATO officials, APA reports quoting The New York Times.
Nine of the injured police were transported to a NATO base, FOB Lightening, in neighboring Paktia Province, for medical treatment.
While suicide bombings occur almost every week in Afghanistan, the majority have missed their target and either killed just the suicide bomber or killed civilians. However, Saturdayâ€™s bombing appeared to have been carefully planned and executed.
â€œWhen a person gets hired as policemen that person does not get screened properly,â€ said Pir Sayid Ishaq Gilani, a former member of Parliament from Paktika Province. â€œThe police headquarters does not ask him about his background and about his family, they just hire him and then those types of people can cause big problems in the future.â€
The bombing occurred at midday in Sharana, the provincial capital, when the suicide bombers wearing police uniforms walked into the headquarters where policemen were milling around just before the lunch hour.
Paktika, a province that borders the Taliban and insurgent stronghold of South Waziristan in Pakistanâ€™s federally administered tribal areas, has been troubled for months as Taliban and NATO forces battled for influence there. Although NATO has repeatedly released pronouncements that Taliban forces had been repelled and that tribal elders were committed to supporting the Afghan government, the area has continued to be vulnerable to attacks, suggesting that there is still local support for insurgents.
Parliament members, including Mr. Gilani, said that many local people have been detained by NATO and Afghan forces and that in a number of cases, the people were not involved in the insurgency and the arrests have exacerbated resentment of the government and western forces.
A NATO service member died in an improvised explosive device attack in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday.