Afghanistan on edge as attacks rise

KABUL, Afghanistan —Taliban insurgents struck targets across Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least six people and wounding scores more, extending a string of attacks in recent weeks that have put Afghans on edge, two months into the term of the new U.S.-backed government.

The most brazen assault began Thursday night, when five Taliban suicide bombers and a group of fighters tried to infiltrate Camp Bastion, an air base in the volatile southern province of Helmand, triggering an intense gun battle that lasted into Friday morning, said Omer Zowak, a spokesman for the provincial governor’s office. Afghan soldiers repelled the attack, killing at least five Taliban fighters. Two soldiers died and six were wounded in the battle.

The attack was the latest by the Islamist Taliban insurgency targeting figures and centers of authority and influence in recent weeks. British and American forces this year pulled out of Camp Bastion, a British base, and transferred it to the Afghan army. The assault exemplified how the Taliban is trying to seize advantage of a military landscape in which most American and international forces have stopped combat operations and are preparing to withdraw by the end of the year.

The attack also underscored why Afghan commanders have welcomed President Barack Obama’s decision to expand the U.S. military role next year — from providing only advice to allowing combat operations against the Taliban if a threat is perceived and also to provide air support to Afghan forces.

The assault on Camp Bastion was followed Friday by a spate of other attacks across the country, an unusually high volume for a single day, even in Afghanistan. In a separate attack in Helmand province, a suicide bomber drove a truck with explosives into a police post in Nawzad district about 8:30 a.m., killing four policemen and wounding five, Zowak said.

In Nangahar province, in the country’s east, an explosion inside a mosque during the Friday prayers, the most important of the week, wounded at least 26, including three with severe injuries, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a provincial spokesman. The explosives were most likely placed in the mosque, in Khogyani district, before the prayers began, he said.

And in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, three fruit sellers and a passerby were wounded when a bomb exploded in a busy market, said Munir Ahmad Farhad, a spokesman for the governor of Balkh province.