By Alok Bhatt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – The continual violence between insurgency groups and US and Nato forces in Kandahar has recently claimed the lives of three youths, aged between eleven and fifteen. The children were playing near a donkey cart in a residential locality, where their uncle, who had significant involvement in the election of President Hamid Karzai, serves as a local chief. The children jumped on the donkey cart and triggered a concealed explosive device. The blast also injured two police officers and two civilians. Screams were reported to be heard from inside a nearby residential compound, and the scene after the blast has been described as “carnage”.
Explosions were apparently to a donkey fitted with a remote detonator. The weight of the children upon the cart likely activated the detonator, resulting in the explosion. A Taliban leader claimed responsibility for the attack and also asserted that the attack actually took the lives of eleven people. It does not seem to be reported, however, whether or not this count has been confirmed. Furthermore, the Taliban agent divulging the alternate number did not identity the other supposed victims as either civilian or combatant, making the additional entailed human rights issues based on his information difficult to determine.
Previous reports expressed that only one boy had been killed while the two civilians and pair of policemen had been injured. Further confusing the account of the blast, the Taliban fighter claiming responsibility for the attack asserted that the attack was intended to effect “foreigners”, and that eleven foreigners were successfully killed. The purpose of the attack, however, was discovered to be a response to a US military strike that has been planned to remove Taliban presence from the Kandahar region.
The instances of attacks outside Kandahar carry severe implications for both the effort to oust the Taliban and the right of civilians to live in peace. Violence occurring in residential areas suggests that the perpetrators of such strikes have accumulated the resources and disposition to strike areas not directly involved in the conflict. This has the effect of terrorizing non-combatants and leaving no areas immune to such attacks. Such reckless regard for human life also signifies the difficulty of attempting to undermine a group that kills merely to demonstrate their presence.
For more information, please see:
Al-Jazeera – Children killed in Afghan blast – 19 April 2010
CNN – Donkey cart at police post, killing 3 children – 19 April 2010
Yahoo! News – Three children killed in Afghan blast – 19 April 2010
