Bombings Rock Afghan Capital

Two bombs targeting Afghan soldiers or government workers exploded here this morning, killing a bystander and injuring dozens of people, officials said.

The explosions followed two other bomb attacks in the capital that injured 11 people less than 24 hours earlier.

One of the blasts today, on a busy street lined with pushcarts, severely burned five or six soldiers and sent about 30 others to the hospital, military hospital surgeon Nisar Ahmad said. A few bystanders also were injured.

A bus carrying the troops careened a couple of hundred feet and crashed into a shop.

Traffic officer Mohammad Sadiq was 30 feet from the blast and his hands bore nicks from shrapnel.

“The bomb could have been on the bus,” he said.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said the second explosion appeared aimed at a Commerce Ministry shuttle bus. One person was killed and three were injured in that attack, police said.

An additional five people were injured inside the bus, two of them seriously, said government worker Noor Hak Stanezai, who had been on board.

A day earlier, two bombs rocked Kabul.

A roadside bomb went off in the eastern part of the city near a bus bringing Interior Ministry officials to work, injuring one of them. The other bomb, hidden in a cart, exploded in a crowded intersection downtown, injuring 10 people. The explosion occurred near the presidential palace, shattering windows at a cinema and the nearby Justice Ministry.

Six of the 10 wounded were hospitalized, a Health Ministry official said.

Elsewhere, fighting between Taliban forces and police killed 12 militants in southern Afghanistan, an official said Tuesday. The clash occurred Monday after sundown in the Zari Dasht district of Kandahar province, said Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for the governor.

A police officer was wounded, he said.

On Monday, Afghan laborers taking lumber to a U.S. base in the eastern province of Kunar were ambushed, and five of them were killed, police said.