Marketplace blast kills 9 as violence rises in Afghanistan’s east

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan — 

In a rising tide of violence in Afghanistan’s east, a suicide bomber struck a crowded urban marketplace Thursday, killing at least nine people, and another blast rocked a provincial governor’s compound, injuring him and several aides.

In the east’s main city of Jalalabad, meanwhile, about 5,000 demonstrators shouted anti-U.S. slogans while protesting the deaths of several children in a blast a day earlier.

Afghan authorities said the blast was caused by a land mine that went off when a police vehicle ran over it; the NATO-led force said the cause of the explosion, which also injured nine Western troops, was under investigation.

But in a reflection of increasing anti-U.S. sentiment inflamed by civilian deaths or injuries caused by either side in the conflict, the protesters burned an effigy of President Obama and cried, “Death to America!”

Eastern Afghanistan, which borders Pakistan’s all-but-ungoverned tribal areas, has been the focus of an escalating confrontation between Western forces and insurgent groups that include the Pakistan-based Haqqani network. With increasing frequency, militants have targeted civilian and military targets alike in the region’s villages and towns.

Thursday’s most lethal explosion came in a marketplace in Gardez, the capital of Paktia province. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force reported the deaths of eight Afghan civilians and a senior security commander. Scores of other people were hurt.

In adjacent Khowst province, the scene of last week’s suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees and contractors, the governor’s compound was hit by a bomb planted apparently in a trash pile just outside its perimeter wall. The acting governor, Tahir Khan Sabari, and half a dozen others, mainly aides, were holding a meeting in a conference room on the other side of the wall when the device detonated.

Seven people, including the governor, suffered minor injuries, mostly from flying glass. Still, the incident represented a serious breach at the heavily fortified compound, which resembles an armed camp. And it represented a growing focus by insurgents on Khowst, whose city center was hit a day earlier by a marketplace bombing similar to the Thursday attack in Gardez.

The sense of insecurity was felt as well in the Afghan capital, Kabul, after three rockets hit a well-to-do residential neighborhood in the city’s southeastern sector. Two women and a child were injured, according to the Afghan Interior Ministry.

Rocket attacks on Kabul are relatively rare and seldom cause serious injuries or property damage. Though largely symbolic, they tend to rattle the capital’s residents and foster the impression that security is deteriorating everywhere in the country.

laura.king@latimes.com