CNN International: Aid workers attacked in Afghanistan

[diamond14]

Tuesday, August 19, 2003 Posted: 1131 GMT ( 7:31 PM HKT)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Tightly guarded independence day celebrations in Afghanistan were marred by new attacks on aid workers and security forces as well as an explosion that ripped through the home of President Hamid Karzai's brother.

On Tuesday, attackers unsuccessfully fired three rockets at a coalition base in Asadabad, capital of eastern Kunar province, the U.S. military said. On Monday, 12 suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed and killed seven policemen near Kharwar in Logar province, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of Kabul, regional commander Hatiqulluh Luddin said.

In a separate incident Monday night in Wardak province, just west of the capital, 20 armed men stormed a compound belonging to the Mine Dog Center, the Afghan mine-clearing group's director, Shahab Aqili, said. The men beat five employees with rifle butts, fired a rocket-propelled grenade at one of their vehicles and set a mine-clearing ambulance on fire. Police said they arrested eight suspects.

On the same day, a homemade bomb exploded near coalition troops on patrol at Bari Kowt, a small village in Kunar on the border with Pakistan. In the northern province of Badakhshan, a gunman on Sunday opened fire on a vehicle belonging to the British charity Save the Children-UK, the group's program director in Kabul, Sue Watkins said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/central/08/19/afghan.attacks.ap/index.html

[Shadder]

1. "Tightly guarded independence day celebrations"

Well, that just about says it all......