Suicide car bomber in Afghan capital kills 5

A maze of checkpoints and blast barriers failed to stop a suicide car bomber from setting off a thunderous blast Saturday in a heavily guarded part of Kabul, killing a U.S. soldier and at least four Afghan civilians.

Six American troops and a U.S. civilian were among at least 30 people injured in the rush-hour explosion on a street in the heart of the capital that runs between the German Embassy and an American base.

Hours later, a suicide bomber struck a North Atlantic Treaty Organization military convoy in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing an Afghan civilian, Western military officials said.

Also Saturday, a U.S. serviceman was killed in a Chinook helicopter’s hard landing in Kunar province, in eastern Afghanistan. It was not immediately clear whether the craft was shot down, though the U.S. military acknowledged there was insurgent fire in the area at the time.

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the Kabul explosion, saying German diplomats and military personnel were the target. The blast shook the walled embassy compound, shattering windows and sending debris flying. An undisclosed number of people inside were hurt, German authorities said.

The Islamic insurgents sometimes try to exploit differences of opinion within the Western military alliance by targeting personnel from countries where public support for the Afghan mission is flagging. Germany generally takes one of the more cautious approaches to the fighting here, with many caveats attached to how and where it deploys its troops.

The U.S. military initially announced, mistakenly, that two U.S. soldiers had been killed in the blast. It later put the number at one. The nearby American base, known as Camp Eggers, mainly houses U.S. troops who help train the Afghan army.

Several cars and trucks, including a sewage tanker, were set afire in the explosion, sending plumes of foul-smelling smoke billowing into the air.

For Kabul residents, the blast underscored a persistent sense of insecurity, although the number of attacks in the capital has dropped in recent months. Slushy snow and chill winds had kept many people indoors for several days, but on Saturday the skies brightened a bit and the street where the attack took place was full of motorists and pedestrians.

Gul Agha, 28, who was driving past the embassy shortly before 10 a.m., was still having trouble speaking half an hour later. “I was in shock for a while. I couldn’t hear anything, and smoke was all around,” he said. He saw at least a dozen bloodied people, he said.

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi, said 23 Afghan civilians were hurt. Most Taliban suicide bombings targeting highly fortified military and government installations kill and injure civilians instead.

“Militants . . . do not care who or what they target. This was a well-traveled civilian road,” said Army Col. Jerry O’Hara, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. “This incident will only strengthen our collective resolve to aggressively pursue enemy networks before they can hurt innocent Afghans and coalition forces.”

The Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said by telephone from an undisclosed location that the embassy had been under surveillance by insurgents and that the car bomber was trying to hit vehicles carrying German military officers or diplomats. He warned that Germans would be targeted as long as the country’s soldiers remained in Afghanistan.

Most of the 3,200 German troops are stationed in Afghanistan’s north, where fighting is considerably less intense than in the south and in the east, the heartland of the insurgency. Many of the estimated 30,000 American troops expected to arrive this year are to be stationed in the south, and U.S. forces are currently concentrated in the east, along the border with Pakistan.

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laura.king@latimes.com

Special correspondent M. Karim Faiez contributed to this report.