Suicide attack kills four in Kabul

A suicide bomber targeted an intelligence director's vehicle in the Afghan capital Kabul Wednesday, killing four civilians and wounding another 12, the intelligence service said. The Taliban-style bombing, the second suicide attack this year in the heavily guarded city, took place in central Kabul near many government and business buildings.
Police immediately cordoned off the area and fire-fighters were called in to hose blood and pieces of flesh from the road. "In the attack, four innocent civilians were martyred and another 12 civilians were wounded. The intelligence director survived the attack," said an intelligence service press statement read over the phone to AFP.
The bomber targeted Kamaludin Khan Achikzay, a senior intelligence director who was driving to work. Achikzay and his guards escaped the attack unhurt, the statement said. Kabul criminal investigation police chief General Ali Shah Paktiawal, speaking from the scene of the attack, blamed the bombing on "enemies of the people."
Afghan officials often use the phrase to refer to Taliban militants who were ousted from power in late 2001 by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and have since waged a bloody insurgency. Achikzay, a director with the National Directorate of Security - the Afghan secret service - was until a few months ago the intelligence chief of insurgency-hit southern Kandahar province, where the Taliban were spawned.
An Afghan civilian was killed late Tuesday when unknown gunmen, who accused him of working with the foreign military, dragged him out of his house in the south-eastern province of Ghazni and shot him dead, police said.
In the southern province of Kandahar meanwhile, gunmen kidnapped Tuesday an Afghan medical team of a doctor, three nurses and a driver, provincial health director Abdul Qayoom Pakhoa told AFP.
The defence ministry announced meanwhile it wrapped up Tuesday a six-day operation in the southern province of Helmand with a final toll of at least 122 militants and 12 police dead. The operation cut an important Taliban supply route and destroyed militant strongholds near the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.