Bomber strikes in Afghanistan

A suicide bomber claimed the lives of at least 10 people, including members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, (ISAF) in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday.

"A suicide bomber targeted a group of foreign friends," Faryab governor Abdul Haq Shafaq said. "They were military. There are casualties, dead and wounded."

The bomber was riding a motorcycle when he detonated the explosives at the gate of the park in Maimana, the capital of Faryab province. His target remains unclear.

The exact numbers or dead and wounded are not yet known, but Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, described the blast as "powerful" and put the death toll at 10. He said six civilians and four policemen were killed, with 20 people wounded, including four police.

NATO announced that three of its service members were killed in the attack but provided no other details or the nationalities of the victims.

"A suicide bomber with a vest full of explosives and on a explosive-laden motorcycle targeted some foreign forces near a UN compound in Maymana," a spokesman said.

The director of Maimanah hospital, Abdul Ali Aleen, said six of those who died and the 26 wounded had been brought to there.

Placing blame

Afghan and NATO security forces are often targeted by militants who are fighting to undermine the alliance's efforts to try and build up the Afghan military with the aim of leaving them in charge by the end of 2014.

Militants have stepped up their efforts in recent days, with nine Afghan police being killed and 11 abducted.

In a statement on its website, Islamist Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the attack, saying eight foreign soldiers were killed and six wounded.

The region is considered to be relatively calm, but it is also known for being a stronghold of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistant, or IMU, an al Qaeda affiliated group active in northern Afghanistan.

On March 26, a joint Afghan and coalition force killed IMU leader Makhdum Nusrat and detained two other insurgents. The coalition said at the time that Nusrat had been leading attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in the north for the past eight months and had been plotting the assassination of a member of the Afghan parliament.

Normally fighting calms in this region over the winter months, but anger against foreign forces is on the rise. This rise in tensions is blamed on the massacre of 17 Afghan civilians, allegedly by a rogue US soldier, on March 11, as well as the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran at a US military base.

Death toll mounts

The 2012 death toll for NATO service members killed in Afghanistan has reached 97, including at least 52 Americans.

ISAF has 130,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, but but is scheduled to hand responsibility for security across the country to Afghans and withdraw by the end of 2014.

Thus far, the war has cost the West hundreds of billions of dollars and 3,000 lives.

tm/pfd (AFP, AP, dpa)