KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A police truck packed with officers and detainees struck a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan’s largest city, killing 10 of those aboard, officials said Sunday.
It was one of four blasts Saturday that left at least 24 people dead across the country. Attacks by insurgents are a daily occurrence around Afghanistan and the Afghan police with their unarmored pickup trucks and remote checkpoints are a common target.
In the Kandahar city blast, police had driven to a residential neighborhood of the city at night to inspect a bomb that had been found there, said Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial government. They detained three suspects and were driving back with them in a police pickup truck when the vehicle struck another explosive buried in the road. Eight police officers and two detainees were killed in the blast.
Meanwhile, Afghan authorities accused NATO of killing three civilian men in a nighttime ambush in the eastern Logar province. The coalition disputed the account, saying it had no operations in Logar’s Baraki Barak district Saturday night. NATO said there were three dead, but they were insurgents killed by Afghan forces.
