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And this is what you call things improving in Afghanistan?

When the world wake up to the almost unquestionable fact that things are basically not improving in Afghanistan? - and that NATO forces continue to kill innocent people, including children.    Agence France-Presse reports on the latest from the war-torn country.

"Up to 40 civilians were killed in a bloody day across Afghanistan on Wednesday as a twin suicide bombing laid waste to a crowded makeshift bazaar and a NATO air strike hit a home, Afghan officials said.

Twenty-three people were killed and 50 others were wounded in the suicide attack in a car park crammed with vehicles supplying the largest NATO base in southern Afghanistan, police said.

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck first and as a crowd gathered to help the victims a second bomber walked into their midst and set off explosives strapped to his body, Kandahar provincial police chief General Abdul Raziq told AFP.

"All casualties are civilians -- not a single military person," he said.
Hours earlier, at least 15 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a NATO air strike on a home in Logar province south of Kabul, police said.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said "multiple insurgents" were killed in the air strike, which was ordered after troops came under fire.

But deputy provincial police chief Rais Khan Sadeq Abdulrahimzai told AFP: "18 civilians, including women and children, are dead," adding that seven Taliban insurgents were also killed.

Provincial government spokesman Din Mohammad Darvish said "around 15 civilians are dead" after the attack in the early hours of Wednesday.

An AFP correspondent said he saw at least 15 bodies that had been loaded into five vehicles and driven by villagers to the provincial capital of Pol-i-Alam."

 

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