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WORLD> Asia-Pacific
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Suicide bomber in police uniform kills 9 Afghans
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-30 22:53 Taliban attacks have spiked the last three years, as militants have taken control of wide swaths of countryside. Afghanistan's police, who have less training and equipment than their army counterparts, are seen as a weak link in the country's security structure. Police officers have suffered the brunt of militant attacks, and hundreds have died in bombings and ambushes over the last year. Training and equipping the Afghan security forces is one of the key elements of the exit strategy for the US and other Western troops. The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday that armed conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan was intensifying. Conflict in Pakistan has forced many people to flee their homes and caused a 50 percent rise in civilian casualties entering ICRC field hospitals over the past year, said Jacques de Maio, regional chief for the ICRC. "We are talking about hundreds of fresh, war-wounded civilians," De Maio said. He said actual casualties were likely to be far higher because many cannot reach hospitals. Anticipating more fighting in the coming months, the Red Cross is doubling its budget for Pakistan to $46 million and sending more aid workers there and to Afghanistan, he said. "We expect more war-wounded. We expect more civilians being displaced," De Maio told reporters in Geneva. The Red Cross is one of the few aid agencies able to operate in hostile tribal areas on both sides of the border because of long-running relations, including with Taliban-linked militants. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will attend a U.N.-sponsored conference on Afghanistan in the Netherlands on Tuesday. The meeting should "consider the plight of civilians as a matter of urgency," de Maio said. "In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is expected that the political and military dynamics of the conflict will further endanger the lives and livelihood of civilians." De Maio also called for better treatment of detainees, and "on a stronger, neutral and independent humanitarian response."
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