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Two killed by car bomb outside Afghanistan drugs summit
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-25 08:34 A car bomb exploded outside
the venue of an anti-drugs conference in eastern Afghanistan, killing two people
including a policeman and wounding two others, a district official said.
The device detonated Thursday as local officials and elders were gathering
for the meeting in eastern Nangarhar province's Khogiani district on the border
with Pakistan, district chief Mohammad Omar Layiq told AFP.
"One policeman and one civilian were killed and two, including my deputy,
were wounded in the explosion," Layiq said.
The bomb exploded in a car driven by one of the participants of the meeting,
he said. The device may have been attached to the vehicle overnight when it was
in a public parking lot, he said.
"We cannot blame the attack on anyone right now. The vehicle was parked in a
lot before it was driven to the meeting. We have launched an investigation,"
Layiq said.
Police later arrested three suspects.
Similar blasts in the past have been blamed on remnants of the Taliban regime
that was removed from power in a US-led campaign four years ago after they
refused to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The government's efforts to stabilise war-ravaged Afghanistan have been
undermined by violence blamed on Taliban and other anti-government insurgents
and criminal gangs involved in the drugs trade.
The attack happened hours after the United Nations and United States
government said land under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been
drastically cut over the past year, for the first time since the 2001 fall of
the Taliban.
Afghanistan produces about 87 percent of the world's opium, most of which
ends up as heroin on the streets of Europe.
Nangarhar is one of the main routes for smuggling the drug out of the country
and also has laboratories that converts opium gum into morphine base and then
into heroin.
In a four-day operation in October, police in the province destroyed 30
opium-processing laboratories and tonnes of drugs and chemicals used to make
heroin.
This year has been the deadliest in four years in Afghanistan, with violence
claiming the lives of nearly 1,500 people -- most of them suspected militants
involved in clashes with Afghan and US-led forces hunting down
insurgents.
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