KABUL, Jan. 28 — Successive fatal attacks on the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kabul indicated that Afghanistan's ousted Taliban was launching new offensives against foreign troops in the country, observers here said.
One British soldier of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed on Wednesday morning and three of his comrades in arms wounded in a car bomb attack on an eastern Kabul highway.
The attack occurred just one day after a Canadian peacekeeper lost his life and three others were injured in a suicide bomb attack in a southern Kabul area.
About 10 civilians, including one French aid worker, were also wounded in the two attacks, which Afghan securities said were made by the enemy of Afghanistan, a reference to the country's former ruling Taliban.
The incidents took place at a time when US-led coalition forces are desperately trying to annihilate remnants of the Taliban regime and their al-Qaide allies regrouping in the mountainous southern and eastern parts of the post-war country.
The bloody attacks in two consecutive days were a sign that the hard-line militia movement, which was ousted by a US-led campaign over two years ago, is intensifying activities against foreign troops in the country, local analysts said.
"Consecutive attacks against coalition forces and government installations clearly indicate that the Taliban is regrouping and stepping up attacks," said a retired Afghan army officer on condition of anonymity.
Major General Andrew Leslie, commander of Canadian peacekeeping troops with the ISAF, told reporters late Tuesday that the suicidebomb attack against his soldiers showed a change of tactics by terrorists in Afghanistan.
"It does indicate certainly a change" of attack tactics against peacekeeping soldiers here, the commander said at a press conference.
The suicide attack on Tuesday was the first one in Afghanistan in which a human body was used as weapon to make a direct bomb attack.
According to the Canadian commander, the attacker who strapped explosives on his body detonated himself when the Canadian patrolling jeep was passing by.
However, it was not confirmed whether the car bomb attack on Wednesday was a suicide one.
The blast was so severe that windowpanes of nearby houses along the highway were shaken into pieces, according to Afghan witnesses.
No one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but Afghan police and local residents put their fingers at the ousted Taliban.
"Taliban loyalists would not stop such activities unless the US-backed government consolidates its grip throughout the country," said Adbul Hakim, an elder Afghan in his sixties, who was near the area when the explosion occurred.
But a Taliban spokesman reportedly claimed the responsibility for the attack on Canadian soldiers, warning that the hard-line militia would continue to target US forces and their allies including the peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan.
The same spokesman last month said that the militia had sent 60 suicide attackers to make fatal offensive against foreign and Afghan troops in Kabul.
Another explosion took place on Wednesday morning in front of the gate of a German camp of the ISAF, but causing no casualties, a spokesman of the peacekeeping force said.
Afghan police were quick to step up security measures around the capital city, checking suspicious vehicles and frisk their passengers in each main thoroughfare
Meanwhile, three US soldiers were injured in the eastern Kunar province on Monday when their vehicle hit a landmine, US military spokesman Bryan Hilferty told a press briefing here on Wednesday.
Taliban's fugitive leader Mullah Omar, believed to be hiding inthe country's southern mountains, last year vowed to wage a jihad, or holy war, against foreign troops and the US-backed government in the country.
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