Rocket attack kills three teenage sisters in Kabul

A rare rocket attack in the Afghan capital Saturday demolished two rooms of a mud-brick home and killed three teenage sisters, relatives and police said.

Two rockets were fired, and one landed on the house, adjacent to a police training center. The girls were 13, 15 and 16 years old, said Sayed Farah Muz, their uncle.

During the country’s civil war in the 1990s, Kabul suffered greatly from rocket fire, but such attacks have been a rarity in the last several years.

Police did not say who was believed responsible for the attack. Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of Kabul’s criminal investigations, said the rockets were probably fired from the west end of the city, near neighboring Wardak province, which has seen an influx of militants in the last year.

Also Saturday, a suicide car bomber attacked a police checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, killing three police officers and two civilians in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province, the local police chief said. Four officers and one civilian were wounded.