Afghanistan bomb attacks kill 4 police officers, injure dozens

Four police officers were killed and dozens of civilians injured Friday in three attacks, officials said, as a spate of deadly violence continued across Afghanistan.

In the southern province of Helmand, a suicide bomber detonated a truck laden with explosives near a police checkpoint in the Nawzad district, killing four police officers and wounding five others, said Omar Zwak, spokesman for the provincial governor.

A bomb went off inside a mosque during Friday prayers in the eastern province of Nangarhar, injuring more than 30 worshipers, according to provincial police. Seven of the injured were reportedly listed in critical condition.

Taliban militants, who have taken responsibility for much of the bloodletting in Afghanistan in recent days, condemned the mosque attack. No group immediately claimed to have carried it out.

In the usually peaceful northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, a bomb planted inside a cart wounded three civilians, police spokesman Sher Jan Durrani said.

Violence has increased in Afghanistan since President Ashraf Ghani signed security agreements with the United States and NATO that allow for about 12,000 foreign soldiers to stay in the country after most international troops leave at the end of December.

On Thursday, hours before the Afghan Senate resoundingly approved the security agreements, a suicide car bomber hit a British Embassy vehicle in the eastern part of Kabul, killing five Afghans and a British civilian security contractor.

Later, four militants attacked the Kabul offices of International Relief and Development, an American nonprofit group, waging a five-hour gun battle with Afghan security forces before the assailants were killed. A Nepalese guard working for the agency was injured.

The attack in Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan diplomatic neighborhood was the 10th in the capital in two weeks, one of the longest stretches of significant violence in recent months.

Ahmadi is a special correspondent.