From AP:
KABUL, Afghanistan – In the most brazen attack yet on Kabul’s heavily guarded center, a car bomber rammed into an American Humvee outside the U.S. Embassy on Friday, killing 16 other people, including two U.S. soldiers. It was the Afghan capital’s deadliest
suicide attack since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the privately run Pajhwok Afghan News Agency. Ahmadi’s exact ties to the Taliban leadership are unclear.
The morning blast spewed body parts and pieces of U.S. military uniforms across a major road and into trees that were set ablaze by the explosion — part of the worst spate of violence in Afghanistan since the collapse of the hard-line Islamic regime.
The attack shattered what had been a typically peaceful Muslim sabbath in the war-ravaged capital and revealed the lingering vulnerability of foreign troops, local forces and Afghan civilians to terrorist attacks almost five years after a pro-American government
was installed. Attacks in central Kabul have been rare in comparison to areas on the edge of the city and in the country’s south.
This comes as the US military warns of a new group of suicide attackers targeting foreign troops in Kabul. Also from AP: “U.S. military: Suicide cell in Kabul”
Taliban-led militants have increasingly adopted tactics reminiscent of insurgents in Iraq, including suicide attacks.
U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins said Sunday that a suicide bombing cell is operating in Kabul with the aim of targeting foreign troops.
Collins said he couldn’t give further details about the suicide bombing cell, but said it was still working and “remains very much a threat.”
“Through our intelligence sources we know there’s a cell here in Kabul, at least one, whose primary mission is to seek coalition or international troops and hit them with suicide bombs,” he said at a news conference.