KABUL, Afghanistan - In the most violent day in Afghanistan in nearly a year, 15 people, including six children, were killed yesterday when a bomb exploded on their bus in southern Afghanistan and at least 40 people were killed in fighting in the country's east and south.
The bomb exploded in Helmand province aboard a bus headed for the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, according to wire reports. It was the deadliest such attack since a bomb exploded in Kabul in September, killing 35 people.
In the east, suspected Taliban guerrillas attacked government soldiers in the province of Khost, about four miles from the border with Pakistan, late Tuesday. Fifteen attackers were killed, as were five government soldiers, according to a spokesman for the provincial governor quoted by the Associated Press.
A local commander said government troops had captured one Pakistani guerrilla and one Arab whose nationality was unknown.
Afghan officials have accused Pakistan of allowing Taliban insurgents to operate unimpeded and make forays into Afghanistan.
In Oruzgan province, a clash between the forces of rival warlords loyal to the government of President Hamid Karzai left 20 fighters dead, one of the commanders, Haji Abdul Rahman, told the Associated Press.
In Kabul yesterday, two university students were killed and one was seriously wounded when a bomb they were making went off by accident, police said. In June, four German peacekeepers were killed by a suicide bomber in the capital.
The violence cast into gruesome relief the growing threats to the country's stability from what are believed to be remnants of the Taliban or al-Qaida, or Afghans opposed to the U.S.-backed administration led by Karzai.
The attacks came two days after NATO, in a historic departure from its traditional European theater of operations, assumed control of the multinational peacekeeping force that patrols Kabul and the areas around it.
The attacks also came as the United States was preparing to invest an additional $1 billion in Afghanistan, possibly supplemented by $600 million from other countries, in an attempt to accelerate the pace of reconstruction.
A significant amount of the aid, according to Afghan officials, will be devoted to strengthening national institutions - particularly the national army and police - that could help provide security outside Kabul.
Warlords remain entrenched throughout the country, and Afghanistan is again the world's largest opium producer. Afghan officials say they fear that the opium trade, which both profits from and feeds the insecurity around the country, could pull the country under.
Increasing attacks in the southeast, meanwhile, including some on aid workers, have prompted aid groups to restrict their efforts in a region that is extremely poor.
